Algebraic structures on Grothendieck groups of a tower of algebras

The Grothendieck group of the tower of symmetric group algebras has a self-dual graded Hopf algebra structure. Inspired by this, we introduce by way of axioms, a general notion of a tower of algebras and study two Grothendieck groups on this tower linked by a natural paring. Using representation theory, we show that our axioms give a structure of graded Hopf algebras on each Grothendieck groups and these structures are dual to each other. We give some examples to indicate why these axioms are necessary. We also give auxiliary results that are helpful to verify the axioms. We conclude with some remarks on generalized towers of algebras leading to a structure of generalized bialgebras (in the sense of Loday) on their Grothendieck groups. (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc.