English

A stability result for balanced dictatorships in $S_{n}$

Combinatorics 2017-07-03 v4

Abstract

We prove that a balanced Boolean function on SnS_{n} whose Fourier transform is highly concentrated on the first two irreducible representations of SnS_{n}, is close in structure to a dictatorship, a function which is determined by the image or pre-image of a single element. As a corollary, we obtain a stability result concerning extremal isoperimetric sets in the Cayley graph on SnS_{n} generated by the transpositions. Our proof works in the case where the expectation of the function is bounded away from 00 and 11. In contrast, [Ellis, D., Filmus, Y., Friedgut, E., A quasi-stability result for dictatorships in SnS_{n}, Combinatorica 35 (2015), pp. 573-618] deals with Boolean functions of expectation O(1/n) whose Fourier transform is highly concentrated on the first two irreducible representations of SnS_{n}. These need not be close to dictatorships; rather, they must be close to a union of a constant number of cosets of point-stabilizers.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1210.3989,
  title  = {A stability result for balanced dictatorships in $S_{n}$},
  author = {David Ellis and Yuval Filmus and Ehud Friedgut},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.3989},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

29 pages. Conjecture 1 in Section 5 has been adjusted. The Introduction has been corrected and expanded

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:21:46.904Z