Authors Dieter Degrijse, Nansen Petrosyan Title Characteristic classes for cohomology of split Hopf algebra extensions Abstract We introduce characteristic classes for the spectral sequence associated to a split short exact sequence of Hopf algebras. We show that these characteristic classes can be seen as obstructions for the vanishing of differentials in the spectral sequence and prove a decomposition theorem. We also interpret our results in the settings of group and Lie algebra extensions and prove some interesting corollaries concerning the collapse of the (Lyndon-)Hochschild-Serre spectral sequence and the order of characteristic classes. Status Journal of Algebra, Volume 332, Issue 1, 15 April 2011, Pages 366-385