Vertex coalgebras, comodules, cocommutativity and coassociativity

We introduce the notion of vertex coalgebra, a generalization of vertex operator coalgebras. Next we investigate forms of cocommutativity, coassociativity, skew-symmetry, and an endomorphism, D*, which hold on vertex coalgebras. The former two properties require grading. We then discuss comodule structure. We conclude by discussing instances where graded vertex coalgebras appear, particularly as related to Primc's vertex Lie algebra and (universal) enveloping vertex algebras. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.