English

Cycles in Mallows random permutations

Probability 2022-06-02 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

We study cycle counts in permutations of 1,,n1,\dots,n drawn at random according to the Mallows distribution. Under this distribution, each permutation πSn\pi \in S_n is selected with probability proportional to qinv(π)q^{\text{inv}(\pi)}, where q>0q>0 is a parameter and inv(π)\text{inv}(\pi) denotes the number of inversions of π\pi. For \ell fixed, we study the vector (C1(Πn),,C(Πn))(C_1(\Pi_n),\dots,C_\ell(\Pi_n)) where Ci(π)C_i(\pi) denotes the number of cycles of length ii in π\pi and Πn\Pi_n is sampled according to the Mallows distribution. Here we show that if 0<q<10<q<1 is fixed and nn\to\infty then there are positive constants mim_i such that each Ci(Πn)C_i(\Pi_n) has mean (1+o(1))min(1+o(1)) \cdot m_i\cdot n and the vector of cycle counts can be suitably rescaled to tend to a joint Gaussian distribution. Our results also show that when q>1q>1 there is striking difference between the behaviour of the even and the odd cycles. The even cycle counts still have linear means, and when properly rescaled tend to a multivariate Gaussian distribution. For the odd cycle counts on the other hand, the limiting behaviour depends on the parity of nn when q>1q>1. Both (C1(Π2n),C3(Π2n),)(C_1(\Pi_{2n}),C_3(\Pi_{2n}),\dots) and (C1(Π2n+1),C3(Π2n+1),)(C_1(\Pi_{2n+1}),C_3(\Pi_{2n+1}),\dots) have discrete limiting distributions -- they do not need to be renormalized -- but the two limiting distributions are distinct for all q>1q>1. We describe these limiting distributions in terms of Gnedin and Olshanski's bi-infinite extension of the Mallows model. We also investigate these limiting distributions, and study the behaviour of the constants involved in the Gaussian limit laws. We for example show that as q1q\downarrow 1 the expected number of 1-cycles tends to 1/21/2 -- which, curiously, differs from the value corresponding to q=1q=1. In addition we exhibit an interesting "oscillating" behaviour in the limiting probability measures for q>1q>1 and nn odd versus nn even.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.11610,
  title  = {Cycles in Mallows random permutations},
  author = {Jimmy He and Tobias Müller and Teun Verstraaten},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.11610},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

This is a merger of previous version with arXiv:2112.09789 42 pages, 4 figures