Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 1999
We study finite centralizing extensions A⊂H of noetherian Hopf algebras. Our main results provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the fibres of the surjection spec H[Rarr ]spec A to coincide with the X-orbits in spec H, where X denotes the finite group of characters of H that restrict to the counit of A. In particular, all of the fibres are X-orbits if and only if the fibre over the augmentation ideal of A is an X-orbit. An application to the representation theory of quantum function algebras, at roots of unity, is presented.