The quantum duality principle

Abstract

The "quantum duality principle" states that the quantization of a Lie bialgebra - via a quantum universal enveloping algebra (QUEA) - provides also a quantization of the dual Lie bialgebra (through its associated formal Poisson group) - via a quantum formal series Hopf algebra (QFSHA) - and, conversely, a QFSHA associated to a Lie bialgebra (via its associated formal Poisson group) yields a QUEA for the dual Lie bialgebra as well; more precisely, there exist functors QUEA --> QFSHA and QFSHA --> QUEA, inverse of each other, such that in either case the Lie bialgebra associated to the target object is the dual of that of the source object. Such a result was claimed true by Drinfeld, but seems to be unproved in literature: we give here a complete detailed proof of it.