Bialgebra Coverings and Transfer of Structure

Abstract: We introduce the bicategory of bialgebras with coverings (which can be thought of as coalgebra-indexed families of morphisms), and provide a motivating application to the transfer of formulas for primitives and antipode. Additionally, we study properties of this bicategory and various sub-bicategories, and describe some universal constructions. Finally, we generalize Nichols' result on bialgebra quotients of Hopf algebra, which gives conditions on when the resulting bialgebra quotient is a Hopf algebra.