Skew bracoids

Abstract

Skew braces are intensively studied owing to their wide ranging connections and applications. We generalize the definition of a skew brace to give a new algebraic object, which we term a skew bracoid. Our construction involves two groups interacting in a manner analogous to the compatibility condition found in the definition of a skew brace. We formulate tools for characterizing and classifying skew bracoids, and study substructures, quotients, homomorphisms, and isomorphisms. As a first application, we prove that finite skew bracoids correspond with Hopf-Galois structures on finite separable extensions of fields, generalizing the existing connection between finite skew braces and Hopf-Galois structures on finite Galois extensions.