Generalized Frobenius Algebras and the Theory of Hopf Algebras

"Co-Frobenius" coalgebras were introduced as dualizations of Frobenius algebras. Recently, it was shown in \cite{I} that they admit left-right symmetric characterizations analogue to those of Frobenius algebras: a coalgebra $C$ is co-Frobenius if and only if it is isomorphic to its rational dual. We consider the more general quasi-co-Frobenius (QcF) coalgebras; in the first main result we show that these also admit symmetric characterizations: a coalgebra is QcF if it is weakly isomorphic to its (left, or equivalently right) rational dual $Rat(C^*)$, in the sense that certain coproduct or product powers of these objects are isomorphic. These show that QcF coalgebras can be viewed as generalizations of both co-Frobenius coalgebras and Frobenius algebras. Surprisingly, these turn out to have many applications to fundamental results of Hopf algebras. The equivalent characterizations of Hopf algebras with left (or right) nonzero integrals as left (or right) co-Frobenius, or QcF, or semiperfect or with nonzero rational dual all follow immediately from these results. Also, the celebrated uniqueness of integrals follows at the same time as just another equivalent statement. Moreover, as a by-product of our methods, we observe a short proof for the bijectivity of the antipode of a Hopf algebra with nonzero integral. This gives a purely representation theoretic approach to many of the basic fundamental results in the theory of Hopf algebras.