Quasi-Hopf Superalgebras and Elliptic Quantum Supergroups

Abstract

We introduce the quasi-Hopf superalgebras which are $Z_2$ graded versions of Drinfeld's quasi-Hopf algebras. We describe the realization of elliptic quantum supergroups as quasi-triangular quasi-Hopf superalgebras obtained from twisting the normal quantum supergroups by twistors which satisfy the graded shifted cocycle condition, thus generalizing the quasi-Hopf twisting procedure to the supersymmetric case. Two types of elliptic quantum supergroups are defined, that is the face type $B_{q,\lambda}(G)$ and the vertex type $A_{q,p}[\hat{sl(n|n)}]$ (and $A_{q,p}[\hat{gl(n|n)}]$), where $G$ is any Kac-Moody superalgebra with symmetrizable generalized Cartan matrix. It appears that the vertex type twistor can be constructed only for $U_q[\hat{sl(n|n)}]$ in a non-standard system of simple roots, all of which are fermionic.