On comatrix corings and bimodules. (Q1421774)

A comatrix coring can be associated to any \((B,A)\)-bimodule \(M\), where \(M\) is a finitely generated projective right \(A\)-module. A particular example of this is the Sweedler coring of a ring extension \(B\to A\), which provides equivalent description for the descent theory for the extension \(B\to A\). The aim of the paper is to study properties of comatrix corings in relation to properties of bimodules and how properties of the bimodules are reflected in the comatrix coring. It is shown that the dual \((A,B)\)-bimodule \(M^*\) is a separable bimodule if and only if the corresponding comatrix coring is a cosplit coring. Also if \(M\) is a separable (resp. Frobenius) bimodule, then the comatrix coring is a coseparable (resp. Frobenius) coring. Under certain faithful flatness conditions the converse holds. For any ring extension \(B\to A\) one can consider the ring extension \(B\to S\), where \(S\) is the right endomorphism ring of \(M\) so there is also the associated canonical Sweedler coring associated to this ring extension. The authors also study how the properties of a comatrix coring are reflected by the properties of the corresponding Sweedler coring (of the associated ring extension \(B\to S\)). Also a new description of comatrix corings in terms of data reminiscent of a Morita context is given.