English

Sequences in Dihedral Groups with Distinct Partial Products

Combinatorics 2019-04-17 v1

Abstract

Given a subset SS of the non-identity elements of the dihedral group of order 2m2m, is it possible to order the elements of SS so that the partial products are distinct? This is equivalent to the sequenceability of the group when S=2m1|S| = 2m-1 and so it is known that the answer is yes in this case if and only if m>4m>4. We show that the answer is yes when S9|S| \leq 9 and mm is an odd prime other than 3, when S=2m2|S| = 2m-2 and mm is even or prime, and when S=2m2|S| = 2m-2 for many instances of the problem when mm is odd and composite. We also consider the problem in the more general setting of arbitrary non-abelian groups and discuss connections between this work and the concept of strong sequenceability.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.07646,
  title  = {Sequences in Dihedral Groups with Distinct Partial Products},
  author = {M. A. Ollis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.07646},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

23 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:41:15.106Z