The representation theory of a connected smooth affine group scheme over a
field k of characteristic p > 0 is faithfully captured by that of its family
of Frobenius kernels. Such Frobenius kernels are examples of infinitesimal
group schemes, affine group schemes G whose coordinate (Hopf) algebra k[G] is
a finite dimensional local k-algebra. This paper presents a study of the
cohomology algebra H^*(G,k) of an arbitrary infinitesimal group scheme over
k.
We provide a geometric determination of the ``cohomological support variety"
|G| \equiv Spec H^ev(G,k) analogous to that given by D. Quillen for the
cohomology of finite groups. We further study finite dimensional rational
G-modules M for arbitrary infinitesimal group schemes G over k. In a manner
initiated by J. Alperin and L. Evens and J. Carlson for finite groups, we
consider the variety |G|_M \subset |G| of the ideal I_M = ker H^ev(G,k) -->
Ext_G^*(M,M) and provide a geometric description of this variety which is
analogous to that given by G. Avrunin and L. Scott for finite dimensional
modules for finite groups.