Frobenius morphisms and representations of algebras

By introducing Frobenius morphisms on algebras and their modules over the algebraic closure of the finite field of elements, we establish a relation between the representation theory of over and that of the -fixed point algebra over . More precisely, we prove that the category    mod- of finite-dimensional -modules is equivalent to the subcategory of finite-dimensional -stable -modules, and, when is finite dimensional, we establish a bijection between the isoclasses of indecomposable -modules and the -orbits of the isoclasses of indecomposable -modules. Applying the theory to representations of quivers with automorphisms, we show that representations of a modulated quiver (or a species) over can be interpreted as -stable representations of the corresponding quiver over . We further prove that every finite-dimensional hereditary algebra over is Morita equivalent to some , where is the path algebra of a quiver over and is induced from a certain automorphism of . A close relation between the Auslander-Reiten theories for and is established. In particular, we prove that the Auslander-Reiten (modulated) quiver of is obtained by ``folding" the Auslander-Reiten quiver of . Finally, by taking Frobenius fixed points, we are able to count the number of indecomposable representations of a modulated quiver over with a given dimension vector and to generalize Kac's theorem for all modulated quivers and their associated Kac-Moody algebras defined by symmetrizable generalized Cartan matrices.