Acyclic complexes related to noncommutative symmetric functions (Q679084)

In this paper, the authors define a coboundary operator \(\delta\) on the algebra of noncommutative symmetric functions making this algebra into a cochain complex. The coboundary operator takes a particularly nice form on the basis of noncommutative symmetric functions given by the noncommutative ribbon Schur functions. Operations on these functions can be interpreted pictorially as operations on the ribbons themselves. The main theorem of this paper states that the cochain complex on the algebra of noncommutative symmetric functions is acyclic. The transformation matrices for the differential \(\delta \) are given in terms of the noncommutative analogs of the ribbon basis and the complete symmetric function basis. Finally, the main theorem is extended to Gessel's quasi symmetric functions as well. The authors leave open the problem of finding an ``intrinsic interpretation'' of the cochain complexes they define.