The aim of this section is to set out the topological concepts in relation to topological bundles, in particular principal bundles. The classical connection is made for interpreting topological concepts in an algebraic setting, providing a manageable methodology for performing calculations. In particular, the connection between principal bundles in topology and the algebraic Hopf–Galois condition is described. The reader familiar with classical theory of bundles can proceed directly to Definition 2.14.
2.1. Topological Aspects of Bundles
As a natural starting point, bundles are defined and topological properties are described. The principal map is defined and shown that injectivity is equivalent to the freeness condition. The image of the canonical map is deduced and necessary conditions are imposed to ensure the bijectivity of this map. The detailed account of the material presented in this section can be found in [
6].
Definition 2.1 A
bundle is a triple
where
and
are topological spaces and
is a continuous surjective map. Here
is called the
base space,
the
total space and
the
projection of the bundle.
For each
, the
fibre over
is the topological space
,
i.e., the points on the total space which are projected, under
, onto the point
in the base space. A bundle whose fibres are homeomorphic which satisfies a condition known as local triviality are known as fibre bundles. This is formally expressed in the next definition.
Definition 2.2 A
fibre bundle is a triple
where
is bundle and
is a topological space such that
are homeomorphic to
for each
. Furthermore,
satisfies the local triviality condition.
The local triviality condition is satisfied if for each
, there is an open neighourhood
such that
is homeomorphic to the product space
, in such a way that
carries over to the projection onto the first factor. That is the following diagram commutes:
The map
is the natural projection
and
is a homeomorphism.
Example 2.3 An example of a fibre bundle which is non-trivial,
i.e., not a global product space, is the Möbius strip. It has a circle that runs lengthwise through the centre of the strip as a base B and a line segment running vertically for the fibre F. The line segments are in fact copies of the real line, hence each
is homeomorphic to
and the Mobius strip is a fibre bundle.
Let
be a topological space which is compact and satisfies the Hausdorff property and G a compact topological group. Suppose there is a right action
of
on
and write
.
Definition 2.4 An action of
on
is said to be
free if
for any
implies that
, the group identity.
With an eye on algebraic formulation of freeness, the
principal map is defined as
.
Proposition 2.5 acts freely on if and only if is injective. Proof. “
" Suppose the action is free, hence
implies that
. If
, then
and
. Applying the action of
to both sides of
we get
, which implies
by the freeness property, concluding
and
is injective as required.
“
" Suppose
is injective, so
or
implies
and
. Since
from the properties of the action, if
then
from the injectivity property.
Since
acts on
we can define the quotient space
,
The sets
are called the
orbits of the points
. They are defined as the set of elements in
to which
can be moved by the action of elements of
. The set of orbits of
under the action of
forms a partition of
, hence we can define the equivalence relation on
as,
The equivalence relation is the same as saying
and
are in the same orbit,
i.e.,
. Given any quotient space, then there is a canonical surjective map
which maps elements in
to their orbits. We define the pull-back along this map
to be the set
As described above, the image of the principal map
contains elements of
in the first leg and the action of
on
in the second leg. To put it another way, the image records elements of
in the first leg and all the elements in the same orbit as this
in the second leg. Hence we can identify the image of the canonical map as the pull back along
, namely
. This is formally proved as a part of the following proposition.
Proposition 2.6 acts freely on if and only if the map is bijective.
Proof. First note that the map
is well-defined since the elements
and
are in the same orbit and hence map to the same equivalence class under
. Using Proposition 2.5 we can deduce that the injectivity of
is equivalent to the freeness of the action. Hence if we can show that
is surjective the proof is complete.
Take
. This means
, which implies
and
are in the same equivalence class, which in turn means they are in the same orbit. We can therefore deduce that
for some
. So,
implying
. Hence
completing the proof.
Definition 2.7 An action of
on
is said to be
principal if the map
is both injective and continuous (and such that the inverse image of a compact subset is compact in a case of locally compact spaces).
Since the injectivity and freeness condition are equivalent, we can interpret principal actions as both free and continuous actions. We can also deduce that these types of actions give rise to homeomorphisms
from
onto the space
. Principal actions lead to the concept of topological principle bundles.
Definition 2.8 A
principal bundle is a quadruple
such that
(a)
is a bundle and
is a topological group acting continuously on
with action
,
;
(b) the action
is principal;
(c)
such that
;
(d) the induced map
is a homeomorphism.
The first two properties tell us that principal bundles are bundles admitting a principal action of a group
on the total space
,
i.e., principal bundles correspond to principal actions. By Definition
, principal actions occur when the principal map is both injective and continuous, or equivalently, when the action is free and continuous. The third property ensures that the fibres of the bundle correspond to the orbits coming from the action and the final property implies that the quotient space can topologically be viewed as the base space of the bundle.
Example 2.9 Suppose
is a topological space and
a topological group which acts on
from the right. The triple
where
is the orbit space and
the natural projection is a bundle. A principal action of
on
makes the quadruple
a principal bundle.
We describe a principal bundle
as a
-principal bundle over
, or
as a
-principal bundle over
.
Definition 2.10 A
vector bundle is a bundle
where each fibre
is endowed with a vector space structure such that addition and scalar multiplication are continuous maps.
Any vector bundle can be understood as a bundle associated to a principal bundle in the following way. Consider a
-principal bundle
and let
be a representation space of
,
i.e., a (topological) vector space with a (continuous) left
-action
,
. Then
acts from the right on
by
We can define
and a surjective (continuous map)
,
and thus have a fibre bundle
. In the case where
is a vector space, we assume that
acts linearly on
.
Definition 2.11 A
section of a bundle
is a continuous map
such that, for all
,
i.e., a section is simply a section of the morphism
. The set of sections of
is denoted by
.
Proposition 2.12 Sections in a fibre bundle associated to a principal -bundle are in bijective correspondence with (continuous) maps such that All such -equivariant maps are denoted by .
Proof. Remember that
. Given a map
, define the section
,
Conversely, given
, define
by assigning to
a unique
such that
. Note that
is unique, since if
, then
and
. Freeness implies that
, hence
. The map
has the required equivariance property, since the element of
corresponding to
is
.
2.2. Non-Commutative Principal and Associated Bundles
To make the transition from algebraic formulation of principal and associated bundles to non-commutative setup more transparent, we assume that
is a complex affine variety with an action of an affine algebraic group
and set
(all with the usual Euclidean topology). Let
,
and
be the corresponding coordinate rings. Put
and
and note the identification
. Through this identification,
is a Hopf algebra with comultiplication:
, counit
,
, and the antipode
,
.
Using the fact that
acts on
we can construct a right coaction of
on
by
,
. This coaction is an algebra map due to the commutativity of the algebras of functions involved.
We have viewed the spaces of polynomial functions on
and
, next we view the space of functions on Y,
, where
.
is a subalgebra of
by
where
is the canonical surjection defined above. The map
is injective, since
in
means there exists at least one orbit
such that
, but
, so
which implies
. Therefore, we can identify
with
. Furthermore,
if and only if
for all
,
. This is the same as
for all
,
, where
is the unit function
(the identity element of
). Thus we can identify
with the
coinvariants of the coaction
:
Since
is a subalgebra of
, it acts on
via the inclusion map
,
. We can identify
with
by the map
Note that
is well defined because
. Proposition 2.6 immediately yields
Proposition 2.13 The action of on is free if and only if , is bijective. In view of the definition of the coaction of
on
, we can identify
with the
canonical mapThus the action of
on
is free if and only if this purely algebraic map is bijective. In the classical geometry case we take
,
and
, but in general there is no need to restrict oneself to commutative algebras (of functions on topological spaces). In full generality this leads to the following definition.
Definition 2.14 (Hopf–Galois Extensions) Let
be a Hopf algebra and
a right
-comodule algebra with coaction
. Let
, the coinvariant subalgebra of
. We say that
is a
Hopf–Galois extension if the left
-module, right
-comodule map
is an isomorphism.
Proposition 2.13 tells us that when viewing bundles from an algebraic perspective, the freeness condition is equivalent to the Hopf–Galois extension property. Hence, the Hopf–Galois extension condition is a necessary condition to ensure a bundle is principal. Not all information about a topological space is encoded in a coordinate algebra, so to make a fuller reflection of the richness of the classical notion of a principal bundle we need to require conditions additional to the Hopf–Galois property.
Definition 2.15 Let
be a Hopf algebra with bijective antipode and let
be a right
-comodule algebra with coaction
. Let
denote the coinvariant subalgebra of
. We say that
is a
principal -comodule algebra if:
(a)
is a Hopf–Galois extension;
(b) the multiplication map
,
, splits as a left
-module and right
-comodule map (the equivariant projectivity condition).
As indicated already in [
7,
8,
9], principal comodule algebras should be understood as principal bundles in noncommutative geometry. In particular, if
is the Hopf algebra associated to a
-algebra of functions on a quantum group [
10], then the existence of the Haar measure together with the results of [
8] mean that condition (a) in Definition 2.15 implies condition (b) (
i.e., the freeness of the coaction implies its principality).
The following characterisation of principal comodule algebras [
11,
12] gives an effective method for proving the principality of coaction.
Proposition 2.16 A right -comodule algebra with coaction is principal if and only if it admits a strong connection form, that is if there exists a map such that Here denotes the multiplication map, is the unit map, is the comultiplication, counit and the (bijective) antipode of the Hopf algebra , and is the flip. Proof. If a strong connection form
exists, then the inverse of the canonical map
(see Definition 2.14 ) is the composite
while the splitting of the multiplication map (see Definition 2.15 (b)) is given by
Conversely, if
is a principal comodule algebra, then
is the composite
where
is the left
-linear right
-colinear splitting of the multiplication
.
Example 2.17 Let
be a right
-comodule algebra. The space of
-linear maps
is an algebra with the
convolution product and unit
.
is said to be
cleft if there exists a right
-colinear map
that has an inverse in the convolution algebra
and is normalised so that
. Writing
for the convolution inverse of
, one easily observes that
is a strong connection form. Hence a cleft comodule algebra is an example of a principal comodule algebra. The map
is called a
cleaving map or a
normalised total integral.
In particular, if
is an
-colinear algebra map, then it is automatically convolution invertible (as
) and normalised. A comodule algebra
admitting such a map is termed a
trivial principal comodule algebra.
Example 2.18 Let
be a Hopf algebra of the compact quantum group. By the Woronowicz theorem [
10],
admits an invariant Haar measure,
i.e., a linear map
such that, for all
,
where
is the Sweedler notation for the comultiplication. Next, assume that the lifted canonical map:
is surjective, and write
for the
-linear map such that
, for all
. Then, by the Schneider theorem [
8],
is a principal
-comodule algebra. Explicitly, a strong connection form is
where the coaction is denoted by the Sweedler notation
; see [
13].
Having described non-commutative principal bundles, we can look at the associated vector bundles. First we look at the classical case and try to understand it purely algebraically. Start with a vector bundle
associated to a principal
-bundle
. Since
is a vector representation space of
, also the set
is a vector space. Consequently
is a vector space. Furthermore,
is a left module of
with the action
To understand better the way in which
-module
is associated to the principal comodule algebra
we recall the notion of the cotensor product.
Definition 2.19 Given a Hopf algebra
, right
-comodule
with coaction
and left
-comodule
with coaction
, the
cotensor product is defined as an equaliser:
If
is an
-comodule algebra, and
, the
is a left
-module with the action
In particular, in the case of a principal
-bundle
over
, for any left
-comodule
the cotensor product
is a left
-module.
The following proposition indicates the way in which cotensor products enter description of associated bundles.
Proposition 2.20 Assume that the fibre of a vector bundle associated to a principal -bundle is finite dimensional. View as a left comodule of with the coaction (summation implicit) determined by Then the left -module of sections is isomorphic to the left -module . Proof. First identify
with
. Let
be a (finite) dual basis. Take
, and define
.
In the converse direction, define a left
-module map
One easily checks that the constructed map are mutual inverses.
Moving away from commutative algebras of functions on topological spaces one uses Proposition 2.20 as the motivation for the following definition.
Definition 2.21 Let
be a principal
-comodule algebra. Set
and let
be a left
-comodule. The left
-module
is called a
module associated to the principal comodule algebra .
is a projective left
-module, and if
is a finite dimensional vector space, then
is a finitely generated projective left
-module. In this case it has the meaning of a module of sections over a non-commutative vector bundle. Furthermore, its class gives an element in the
-group of
. If
is a cleft principal comodule algebra, then every associated module is free, since
as a left
-module and right
-comodule, so that