Actions of monoidal categories and generalized Hopf smash products. (Q1421785)

In the theory of Hopf algebras and quantum groups, there is a wide variety of constructions of algebras by modifying the multiplication of the tensor product of algebras, and similarly, a variety of coalgebra constructions. Such examples are smash products, crossed products, and more recently, double crossed products, including the Drinfeld double. Often, these constructions involve increasingly complicated, unpleasant and technical computations (for example, for showing that some algebras are associative), such the generalizations of the notions of Hopf algebras like Hopf-algebras and quasi-Hopf algebras in braided monoidal categories. Often a better understanding of generalized crossed products can be achieved through the description of the corresponding category of modules, as for example, the category of modules over a Hopf smash product \(A\#H\) is the category of \(A\)-modules within the monoidal category of \(H\)-modules. The purpose of the paper is to give some unified viewpoint of these constructions. If \(R\) is a \(k\)-algebra and \(\mathcal C\) is a monoidal category, then the setting will be that of an action of \(\mathcal C\) on the category of left \(R\)-modules \(_R{\mathcal M}\), by an associative bifunctor \(\diamondsuit\colon{\mathcal C}\times {_R{\mathcal M}}\to{_R{\mathcal M}}\) which needs to be coherent with the associativity constraint of \(\mathcal C\) and which is also assumed to be right exact in its right argument. In this context every algebra \(A\) (respectively coalgebra \(C\)) in \(\mathcal C\) gives rise to an \(R\)-ring \(A\diamondsuit R\) (respectively an \(R\)-coring \(C\diamondsuit R\)) whose modules (respectively comodules) are the \(A\)-modules (respectively \(C\)-comodules) within the category \(_R{\mathcal M}\). The author shows that this general scheme for constructing (co)associative (co)rings gives conceptual explanations for the double of a quasi-Hopf algebra and for some doubles of Hopf algebras in braided categories, avoiding ad hoc computations for showing the associativity.