GENERALIZATION OF DRINFELD-QUANTUM-AFFINE-ALGEBRAS

Drinfeld gave a current realization of the quantum affine algebras as a Hopf algebra with a simple comultiplication for the quantum current operators. In this Letter, we will present a generalization of such a realization of quantum Hopf algebras. As a special case, we will choos e the structure functions for this algebra to be elliptic functions to derive certain elliptic quantum groups as a Hopf algebra, which degen erates into quantum affine algebras if we take certain degeneration of the structure functions.