Quantum group

In mathematics and theoretical physics, the term quantum group denotes one of a few different kinds of noncommutative algebras with additional structure. These include Drinfeld–Jimbo type quantum groups (which are quasitriangular Hopf algebras), compact matrix quantum groups (which are structures on unital separable C*-algebras), and bicrossproduct quantum groups. Despite their name, they do not themselves have a natural group structure, though they are in some sense 'close' to a group. The term "quantum group" first appeared in the theory of quantum integrable systems, which was then formalized by Vladimir Drinfeld and Michio Jimbo as a particular class of Hopf algebra. The same term is also used for other Hopf algebras that deform or are close to classical Lie groups or Lie algebras, such as a "bicrossproduct" class of quantum groups introduced by Shahn Majid a little after the work of Drinfeld and Jimbo. In Drinfeld's approach, quantum groups arise as Hopf algebras depending on an auxiliary parameter q or h, which become universal enveloping algebras of a certain Lie algebra, frequently semisimple or affine, when q = 1 or h = 0. Closely related are certain dual objects, also Hopf algebras and also called quantum groups, deforming the algebra of functions on the corresponding semisimple algebraic group or a compact Lie group. The discovery of quantum groups was quite unexpected since it was known for a long time that compact groups and semisimple Lie algebras are "rigid" objects, in other words, they cannot be "deformed". One of the ideas behind quantum groups is that if we consider a structure that is in a sense equivalent but larger, namely a group algebra or a universal enveloping algebra, then a group or enveloping algebra can be "deformed", although the deformation will no longer remain a group or enveloping algebra. More precisely, deformation can be accomplished within the category of Hopf algebras that are not required to be either commutative or cocommutative.