Deformations of coalgebra morphisms. (Q863350)

Algebraic deformation theory as first described by Gerstenhaber studies perturbations of algebraic structures using cohomology and obstruction theory. It is a natural problem to describe deformations of morphisms rather than algebraic objects. The aim of this paper is to establish a deformation theory of coalgebra morphisms. The deformation theory of coalgebras has been developed by \textit{M. Gerstenhaber} and \textit{S. D. Schack} [Proc. AMS-IMS-SIAM Jt. Summer Res. Conf., Amherst/MA (USA) 1990, Contemp. Math. 134, 51-92 (1992; Zbl 0788.17009)]. There are two aspects that make the deformation theory for coalgebra morphisms different from that for algebra morphisms: first, we have no coalgebra version of the Cohomology Comparison Theorem, and second, most of the coalgebra morphism theory is element-free, and therefore seems to be more conceptual and transparent than in the associative case.