The Brauer group of Azumaya corings and the second cohomology group. (Q2502102)

The authors introduce the notion of an Azumaya coring and propose a new Brauer group. Given a commutative ring \(R\) and a commutative \(R\)-algebra \(S\), an `Azumaya \(S/R\)-coring' is a twisted form of an `elementary \(S\)-coring' \(I^*\otimes I\), defined for any invertible \(S\)-module \(I\) in terms of a finite dual basis of \(I\). If \(S/R\) is faithfully projective, then the dual of an Azumaya \(S/R\)-coring is an Azumaya algebra which contains \(S\) as a maximal commutative subalgebra. The set of isomorphism classes of Azumaya \(S/R\)-corings forms a group. Its quotient by the subgroup of isomorphism classes of elementary corings, \(\text{Br}^c(S/R)\), is termed the `relative Brauer group of Azumaya \(S/R\)-corings'. \(\text{Br}^c(S/R)\) is shown to be isomorphic to the first Villamayor-Zelevinsky cohomology group of \(S/R\) with values in the category of invertible modules. An `Azumaya coring' over \(R\) is defined as a couple \((S,C)\), where \(S\) is a faithfully flat finitely presented commutative \(R\)-algebra and \(C\) is an Azumaya \(S/R\)-coring. Two such corings \((S,C)\), \((T,D)\) are `Brauer equivalent', if there exist elementary \(R\)-corings \(E_1\) and \(E_2\) such that \(C\otimes E_1\) is isomorphic to \(D\otimes E_2\) as an Azumaya coring over \(R\). The Brauer group of Azumaya corings, \(\text{Br}_{\text{fl}}^c(R)\), is then defined as a quotient of the set of isomorphism classes of Azumaya corings over \(R\) by the Brauer equivalence relation. The group operation is induced by the tensor product over \(R\). \(\text{Br}_{\text{fl}}^c(R)\) is shown to be isomorphic to the second flat cohomology group.