Automorphisms of path coalgebras and applications

Our main purpose is to introduce the notion of trans-datum for quivers, and apply it to the study of automorphism groups of path coalgebras and algebras. We observe that any homomorphism of path coalgebras is uniquely determined by a trans-datum, which is the basis of our work. Under this correspondence, we show for any quiver $Q$ an isomorphism from $\aut(kQ^c)$ to $\Omega^*(Q)$, the group of invertible trans-data from $Q$ to itself. We point out that the coradical filtration gives to a tower of normal subgroups of $\aut(kQ^c)$ with all factor groups determined. Generalizing this fact, we establish a Galois-like theory for acyclic quivers, which gives a bijection between large subcoalgebras of the path coalgebra and their Galois groups, relating large subcoalgebras of a path coalgebra with certain subgroups of its automorphism group. The group $\aut(kQ^c)$ is discussed by studying its certain subgroups, and the corresponding trans-data are given explicitly. By the duality between reflexive coalgebras and algebras, we therefore obtain some structural results of $\aut(\hat{kQ^a})$ for a finite quiver $Q$, where $\hat{kQ^a}$ is the complete path algebra. Moreover, we also apply these results to finite dimensional elementary algebras and recover some classical results.