Universal and Generalized Cartan Calculus on Hopf Algebras

Abstract

We extend the universal differential calculus on an arbitrary Hopf algebra to a ``universal Cartan calculus''. This is accomplished by introducing inner derivations and Lie derivatives which act on the elements of the universal differential envelope. A new algebra is formulated by incorporating these new objects into the universal differential calculus together with consistent commutation relations. We also explain how to include nontrivial commutation relations into this formulation to obtain the ``generalized Cartan calculus''.