Tree expansions of some Lie idempotents}

We prove that the Catalan Lie idempotent $D_n(a,b)$, introduced in [Menous {\it et al.}, Adv. Appl. Math. 51 (2013), 177] can be refined by introducing $n$ independent parameters $a_0,\ldots,a_{n-1}$ and that the coefficient of each monomial is itself a Lie idempotent in the descent algebra. These new idempotents are multiplicity-free sums of subsets of the Poincar\'e-Birkhoff-Witt basis of the Lie module. These results are obtained by embedding noncommutative symmetric functions into the dual noncommutative Connes-Kreimer algebra, which also allows us to interpret, and rederive in a simpler way, Chapoton's results on a two-parameter tree expanded series.