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AMS Eastern Sectional Meeting in Montr\'eal, Quebec Canada
4-5 May 2002

Title:Structure of the Malvenuto-Reutenauer Hopf algebra of permutations.
Session Name: Special Session on Combinatorial Hopf Algebras

Author: Marcelo Aguiar
Author: Frank Sottile
Abstract:
We analyze the structure of the Malvenuto-Reutenauer Hopf algebra of permutations in detail. We give explicit formulas for its antipode, prove that it is a cofree coalgebra, determine its primitive elements and its coradical filtration and show that it decomposes as a crossed product over the Hopf algebra of quasi-symmetric functions. We also describe the structure constants of the multiplication as a certain number of facets of the permutahedron. Our results reveal a close relationship between the structure of this Hopf algebra and the weak order on the symmetric groups.