English

Top to random shuffles on colored permutations

Combinatorics 2023-03-15 v2

Abstract

A deck of nn cards are shuffled by repeatedly taking off the top card, flipping it with probability 1/21/2, and inserting it back into the deck at a random position. This process can be considered as a Markov chain on the group BnB_n of signed permutations. We show that the eigenvalues of the transition probability matrix are 0,1/n,2/n,,(n1)/n,10,1/n,2/n,\ldots,(n-1)/n,1 and the multiplicity of the eigenvalue i/ni/n is equal to the number of the {\em signed} permutation having exactly ii fixed points. We show the similar results also for the colored permutations. Further, we show that the mixing time of this Markov chain is nlognn\log n, same as the ordinary 'top-to-random' shuffles without flipping the cards. The cut-off is also analyzed by using the asymptotic behavior of the Stirling numbers of the second kind.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.08071,
  title  = {Top to random shuffles on colored permutations},
  author = {Fumihiko Nakano and Taizo Sadahiro and Tetsuya Sakurai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.08071},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Corrected version

R2 v1 2026-06-25T00:58:45.866Z