Similarity, Codepth Two Bicomodules and QF Bimodules

For any k-coalgebra C it is shown that similar quasi-finite C-comodules have strongly equivalent coendomorphism coalgebras; (the converse is in general not true). As an application we give a general result about codepth two coalgebra homomorphisms. Also a notion of codepth two bicomodule is introduced. The last section applies similarity to an endomorphism ring theorem for quasi-Frobenius (QF) bimodules and then to finite depth ring extensions. For QF extensions, we establish that left and right depth two are equivalent notions as well as a converse endomorphism theorem, and characterize depth three in terms of separability and depth two.