The maximal dimension of unital subalgebras of the matrix algebra

Abstract

Using Wederburn's main theorem and a result of Gerstenhaber we prove that, over a field of characteristic zero, the maximal dimension of a proper unital subalgebra in the $n \times n$ matrix algebra is $n^2 - n + 1$ and furthermore this upper bound is attained for the so-called parabolic subalgebras. We also investigate the corresponding notion of parabolic coideals for matrix coalgebras and prove that the minimal dimension of a non-zero coideal of the matrix coalgebra ${\mathcal M}^n (k)$ is $n-1$.