Biderivations of triangular algebras. (Q840656)

Let \(C\) be a commutative ring with identity. A `triangular algebra' is every algebra of the form \[ \mathcal A=\text{Tri}(A,M,B) = \begin{pmatrix} A&M \\ 0&B\end{pmatrix}, \] where \(A\) and \(B\) are unital algebras over \(C\) and \(M\) is an \((A,B)\)-bimodule which is faithful as a left \(A\)-module as well as a right \(B\)-module. Basic examples of triangular algebras are upper triangular matrix algebras and nest algebras. A linear map \(d\colon\mathcal A\to\mathcal A\) is a `derivation' if \(d(xy)=d(x)y+xd(y)\) for all \(x,y\in\mathcal A\). A bilinear map \(\varphi\colon\mathcal A\times\mathcal A\to\mathcal A\) is a `biderivation' if it is a derivation with respect to both components, that is, \(\varphi(xy,z)=x\varphi(y,z)+\varphi(x,z)y\) and \(\varphi(x,yz)=y\varphi(x,z)+\varphi(x,y)z\) for all \(x,y,z\in\mathcal A\). The paper is well organized and well written. The second section summarizes the main properties and describes triangular algebras which the author will work with. As biderivations are closely related to derivations, in the third section the author addresses the question whether every derivation of a triangular algebra is an inner derivation. The reviewer thinks that the most beautiful result of this article is the following Theorem. Let \(\mathcal A=\text{Tri}(A,M,B)\) be a triangular algebra and \(Z(\mathcal A)\), \(Z(A)\), \(Z(B)\) be the centers of \(\mathcal A\), \(A\), \(B\), respectively. If the following statements hold: (i) \(\pi_A(Z(\mathcal A))=Z(A)\) and \(\pi_B(Z(\mathcal A))=Z(B)\), where \(\pi_A\) and \(\pi_B\) denote the following two natural projections \(\pi_A\colon\mathcal A\to A\) and \(\pi_B\colon\mathcal A\to B\), (ii) at least one of the algebras \(A\) and \(B\) is noncommutative, (iii) if \(\alpha a=0\), \(\alpha\in Z(\mathcal A)\), \(0\neq a\in\mathcal A\), then \(\alpha=0\), (iv) each derivation of \(\mathcal A\) is inner, then every biderivation \(\varphi\colon\mathcal A\times\mathcal A\to\mathcal A\) that satisfies the condition \(\varphi(e,e)=0\) is of the form \(\varphi(x,y)=\lambda[x,y]\), where \(\lambda\in Z(\mathcal A)\). Studying biderivations in triangular algebras, especially those related to matrix theory or functional analysis, is currently a topic of much investigation, and this work should be of interest to a number of researchers.