Quantum Hopf rigidity in symmetric monoidal categories

Abstract

We prove that a coaction of a Hopf algebra on another preserving the latter's associative-algebra structure and comultiplication automatically also preserves the counit, antipode, and tensor-interchange map and in fact factors through the coaction dual to an action of an affine group scheme by Hopf-algebra automorphisms. This generalizes and unifies a number of results to the effect that quantum groups have only classical symmetries, due to Kasprzak et al., Budzi\'nski-Kasprzak and Brannan et al. The stated automatic classicality follows from the fact that the antipode, counit and tensorand-interchange of a Hopf algebra internal to any symmetric monoidal category are contained in the (non-symmetric) monoidal subcategory generated by the associative-algebra structure and the comultiplication, assuming a weak form of arrow-retraction invariance.