Comatrix corings: Galois corings, Descent Theory, and a Structure Theorem for Cosemisimple corings

Abstract

In order to extrincate the structure of corings with a finitely generated and projective generator we give the notion of a comatrix coring. As consequences we give generalizations of the main characterizations of faithfully flat Galois corings and extensions which work for corings without grouplike elements, as well as a generalization of the Descent Theorem. We provide also a complete description of all cosemisimple corings. No restrictions are made over the ground noncommutative ring.