Gauge groups and bialgebroids

We study the Ehresmann–Schauenburg bialgebroid of a noncommutative principal bundle as a quantization of the gauge groupoid of a classical principal bundle. We show that the gauge group of the noncommutative bundle is isomorphic to the group of bisections of the bialgebroid, and we give a crossed module structure for the bisections and the automorphisms of the bialgebroid. Examples include: Galois objects of Taft algebras, a monopole bundle over a quantum sphere and a not faithfully flat Hopf–Galois extension of commutative algebras. For each of the latter two examples, there is in fact a suitable invertible antipode for the bialgebroid making it a Hopf algebroid.

Comparison of two notions of weak crossed product

We compare the restriction to the context of weak Hopf algebras of the notion of crossed product with a Hopf algebroid introduced in [Cleft extensions of Hopf algebroids, Appl. Categor. Struct. 14(5–6) (2006) 431–469] with the notion of crossed product with a weak Hopf algebra introduced in [Crossed products for weak Hopf algebras with coalgebra splitting, J. Algebra 281(2) (2004) 731–752].

Topological tensor product of bimodules, complete Hopf algebroids and convolution algebras

Given a finitely generated and projective Lie–Rinehart algebra, we show that there is a continuous homomorphism of complete commutative Hopf algebroids between the completion of the finite dual of its universal enveloping Hopf algebroid and the associated convolution algebra. The topological Hopf algebroid structure of this convolution algebra is here clarified, by providing an explicit description of its topological antipode as well as of its other structure maps. Conditions under which that homomorphism becomes an homeomorphism are also discussed. These results, in particular, apply to the smooth global sections of any Lie algebroid over a smooth (connected) manifold and they lead a new formal groupoid scheme to enter into the picture. In the appendices we develop the necessary machinery behind complete Hopf algebroid constructions, which involves also the topological tensor product of filtered bimodules over filtered rings.