Lie Elements and Knuth Relations

Abstract

A coplactic class in the symmetric group S_n consists of all permutations in S_n with a given Schensted Q-symbol, and may be described in terms of local relations introduced by Knuth. Any Lie element in the group algebra of S_n which is constant on coplactic classes is already constant on descent classes. As a consequence, the intersection of the Lie convolution algebra introduced by Patras and Reutenauer and the coplactic algebra introduced by Poirier and Reutenauer is the Solomon descent algebra.