English

On conjugacy classes of $S_n$ containing all irreducibles

Group Theory 2025-09-09 v3 Combinatorics Representation Theory

Abstract

It is shown that for the conjugation action of the symmetric group Sn,S_n, when n=6n=6 or n8,n\geq 8, all SnS_n-irreducibles appear as constituents of a single conjugacy class, namely, one indexed by a partition λ\lambda of nn with at least two parts, whose parts are all distinct and taken from the set of odd primes and 1. The following simple characterisation of conjugacy classes containing all irreducibles is proved: If n4,8,n\neq 4,8, the partition λ\lambda of nn indexes a global conjugacy class for SnS_n if and only if it has at least two parts, and all its parts are odd and distinct.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.08581,
  title  = {On conjugacy classes of $S_n$ containing all irreducibles},
  author = {Sheila Sundaram},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.08581},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages, 22 figures. Minor corrections in proofs. Added Theorem 5.1, which completely characterises the global conjugacy classes in $S_n$ (Conjecture 2 of original paper was subsequently proved by J. Swanson, and is now Proposition 5.2)