The finite dual $H^{\circ}$ of an affine commutative-by-finite Hopf algebra H is studied. Such a Hopf algebra H is an extension of an affine commutative Hopf algebra A by a finite dimensional Hopf algebra $\overline{H}$ . The main theorem gives natural conditions under which $H^{\circ}$ decomposes as a crossed or smash product of $\overline{H}^{\ast}$ by the finite dual $A^{\circ}$ of A. This decomposition is then further analysed using the Cartier–Gabriel–Kostant theorem to obtain component Hopf subalgebras of $H^{\circ}$ mapping onto the classical components of $A^{\circ}$ . The detailed consequences for a number of families of examples are then studied.

We present new examples of finite-dimensional Nichols algebras over fields of characteristic 2 from braided vector spaces that are not of diagonal type, admit realizations as Yetter–Drinfeld modules over finite abelian groups, and are analogous to Nichols algebras of finite Gelfand–Kirillov dimension in characteristic 0. New finite-dimensional pointed Hopf algebras over fields of characteristic 2 are obtained by bosonization with group algebras of suitable finite abelian groups.

Generalised quantum determinantal rings are the analogue in quantum matrices of Schubert varieties. Maximal orders are the noncommutative version of integrally closed rings. In this paper, we show that generalised quantum determinantal rings are maximal orders. The cornerstone of the proof is a description of generalised quantum determinantal rings, up to a localisation, as skew polynomial extensions.

We answer a question of Skalski and Sołan (2016) about inner faithfulness of the Curran’s map of extending a quantum increasing sequence to a quantum permutation. Roughly speaking, we find a inductive setting in which the inner faithfulness of Curran’s map can be boiled down to inner faithfulness of similar map for smaller algebras and then rely on inductive generation result for quantum permutation groups of Brannan, Chirvasitu and Freslon (2018).

We show a precise formula, in the form of a monomial, for certain families of parabolic Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials of the symmetric group. The proof stems from results of Lapid–Mínguez on irreducibility of products in the Bernstein–Zelevinski ring. By quantizing those results into a statement on quantum groups and their canonical bases, we obtain identities of coefficients of certain transition matrices that relate Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials to their parabolic analogues. This affirms some basic cases of conjectures raised recently by Lapid.

A canonical basis in the sense of Lusztig is a basis of a free module over a ring of Laurent polynomials that is invariant under a certain semilinear involution and is obtained from a fixed “standard basis” through a triangular base change matrix with polynomial entries whose constant terms equal the identity matrix. Among the better known examples of canonical bases are the Kazhdan–Lusztig basis of Iwahori–Hecke algebras (see Kazhdan and Lusztig, Representations of Coxeter groups and Hecke algebras, Invent. Math. 53 (1979), 165–184), Lusztig’s canonical basis of quantum groups (see Lusztig, Canonical bases arising from quantized enveloping algebras, J. Amer. Math. Soc. 3(2) (1990), 447–498) and the Howlett–Yin basis of induced $W$-graph modules (see Howlett and Yin, Inducing W-graphs I, Math. Z. 244(2) (2003), 415–431; Inducing W-graphs II, Manuscripta Math. 115(4) (2004), 495–511). This paper has two major theoretical goals: first to show that having bases is superfluous in the sense that canonicalization can be generalized to nonfree modules. This construction is functorial in the appropriate sense. The second goal is to show that Howlett–Yin induction of $W$-graphs is well-behaved a functor between module categories of $W$-graph algebras that satisfies various properties one hopes for when a functor is called “induction,” for example transitivity and a Mackey theorem.

We classify the affine actions of ${{U}_{q}}\left( sl\left( 2 \right) \right)$ on commutative polynomial rings in $m\,\ge \,1$ variables. We show that, up to scalar multiplication, there are two possible actions. In addition, for each action, the subring of invariants is a polynomial ring in either $m$ or $m\,-\,1$ variables, depending upon whether $q$ is or is not a root of 1.

We study the automorphism group of the algebra $\co_q(M_n)$ of n × n generic quantum matrices. We provide evidence for our conjecture that this group is generated by the transposition and the subgroup of those automorphisms acting on the canonical generators of $\co_q(M_n)$ by multiplication by scalars. Moreover, we prove this conjecture in the case when n = 3.