Tensor products of Leibniz bimodules and Grothendieck rings

Abstract

In this paper we define three different notions of tensor products for Leibniz bimodules. The ``natural" tensor product of Leibniz bimodules is not always a Leibniz bimodule. In order to fix this, we introduce the notion of a weak Leibniz bimodule and show that the ``natural" tensor product of weak bimodules is again a weak bimodule. Moreover, it turns out that weak Leibniz bimodules are modules over a cocommutative Hopf algebra canonically associated to the Leibniz algebra. Therefore, the category of all weak Leibniz bimodules is symmetric monoidal and the full subcategory of finite-dimensional weak Leibniz bimodules is rigid and pivotal. On the other hand, we introduce two truncated tensor products of Leibniz bimodules which are again Leibniz bimodules. These tensor products induce a non-associative multiplication on the Grothendieck group of the category of finite-dimensional Leibniz bimodules. In particular, we prove that in characteristic zero for a finite-dimensional solvable Leibniz algebra this Grothendieck ring is an alternative power-associative commutative Jordan ring, but for a finite-dimensional non-zero semi-simple Leibniz algebra it is neither alternative nor a Jordan ring.