Back Coàlgebra Catalan Koalgebra German Coálgebra Spanish Coalgèbre French Koalgebra Croatian 余代数 Japanese Coálgebra Portuguese Коалгебра Russian Коалгебра Ukrainian 餘代數 Chinese
In mathematics, coalgebras or cogebras are structures that are dual (in the category-theoretic sense of reversing arrows) to unital associative algebras. The axioms of unital associative algebras can be formulated in terms of commutative diagrams. Turning all arrows around, one obtains the axioms of coalgebras. Every coalgebra, by (vector space) duality, gives rise to an algebra, but not in general the other way. In finite dimensions, this duality goes in both directions (see below).
Coalgebras occur naturally in a number of contexts (for example, representation theory, universal enveloping algebras and group schemes).
There are also F-coalgebras, with important applications in computer science.