English

Generating the symmetric group by three prefix reversals

Combinatorics 2025-11-24 v1 Group Theory

Abstract

The cubic pancake graphs are Cayley graphs over the symmetric group Symn\mathrm{Sym}_n generated by three prefix reversals. There is the following open problem: characterize all the sets of three prefix reversals that generate Symn\mathrm{Sym}_n. We present a partial answer to this problem, in particular, we characterize all generating sets of three elements that contain at least one of the prefix reversals r2,r3,rn2r_2, r_3, r_{n-2}, and rn1r_{n-1}. We also give some computational results relating to the diameter and the girth of some cubic pancake graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.16959,
  title  = {Generating the symmetric group by three prefix reversals},
  author = {Saúl A. Blanco and Mikhail P. Golubyatnikov and Elena V. Konstantinova and Natalia V. Maslova and Luka A. Nikiforov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.16959},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

18 pages, 4 tables, 3 figures, 21 references

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:48:20.908Z