Separable Subalgebras

Corollary. Subalgebras, quotients, products, and tensor products of separable algebras are separable. 

Separable algebras, besides describing connected components, are related to a familiar kind of matrix and can lead us to another class of group schemes. One calls an n x n matrix g separable if the subalgebra k[p] of End(/c") is separable. We have of course k[g] k[X]/p(X) where p(X) is the minimal polynomial of g. Separability then holds iff k[g] k = /qg] a fc(Y]/p(.Y) is separable over k. This means that p has no repeated roots over k, which is the familiar criterion for g to be diagonalizable over (We will extend this result in the next section.) Then p is separable in the usual Galois theory sense, its roots are in k, and g is diagonalizable over k,. 

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