Related papers: Groups of rotating squares

Inspired by a common technique for shuffling a deck of cards on a table without riffling, we formalize the pile shuffle and investigate its capabilities as a sorting device. Our study is novel in that we consider pile shuffle in three…

This article is a gentle introduction to the mathematical area known as circle packing, the study of the kinds of patterns that can be formed by configurations of non-overlapping circles. The first half of the article is an exposition of…

This paper explores the partition properties of roller coaster permutations, a class of permutations characterized by maximizing the number of alternating runs in all subsequences. We establish a connection between the structure of these…

It is well known that Rubik's cube has a set of group invariants. These values do not change if any layer was rotated, but they can change in case if some of the cubes were removed from the puzzle, mixed up and returned back. In this paper,…

We consider the question of existence of ramified covers over P_1 matching certain prescribed ramification conditions. This problem has already been faced in a number of papers, but we discuss alternative approaches for an existence proof,…

A set of permutations $I \subset S_n$ is said to be {\em k-intersecting} if any two permutations in $I$ agree on at least $k$ points. We show that for any $k \in \mathbb{N}$, if $n$ is sufficiently large depending on $k$, then the largest…

We consider a large family of equivalence relations on permutations in Sn that generalise those discovered by Knuth in his study of the Robinson-Schensted correspondence. In our most general setting, two permutations are equivalent if one…

The orbit problem is at the heart of symmetry reduction methods for model checking concurrent systems. It asks whether two given configurations in a concurrent system (represented as finite strings over some finite alphabet) are in the same…

Let R(n,k) be the number of permutations of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ with k alternating runs. In this paper, we establish the relationships between R(n,k) and the central factorial numbers of even indices as well as the number of signed…

An algebraic interpretation of the one-variable quantum $q$-Krawtchouk polynomials is provided in the framework of the Schwinger realization of $\mathcal{U}_{q}(sl_{2})$ involving two independent $q$-oscillators. The polynomials are shown…

We give a precise definition of mutation of skew symmetrizable matrices over group rings and relate it to folding and mutation of quivers with symmetries. These matrices can have non-zero diagonal entries and we explain a mutation rule in…

The group algebra of the permutation group is spanned by a set of elements called projectors. The coordinates of permutations expanded in projectors are matrix elements of irreducible representations. The projectors of the permutation group…

We consider uniformly random set partitions of size $n$ with exactly $k$ blocks, and uniformly random permutations of size $n$ with exactly $k$ cycles, under the regime where $n-k \sim t\sqrt{n}$, $t>0$. In this regime, there is a simple…

We consider the probability $p(S_n)$ that a pair of random permutations generates either the alternating group $A_n$ or the symmetric group $S_n$. Dixon (1969) proved that $p(S_n)$ approaches $1$ as $n\to\infty$ and conjectured that…

We show that any permutation of ${1,2,...,N}$ can be written as the product of two involutions. As a consequence, any permutation of the elements of an array can be performed in-place in parallel in time O(1). In the case where the…

Permutation patterns and pattern avoidance have been intensively studied in combinatorics and computer science, going back at least to the seminal work of Knuth on stack-sorting (1968). Perhaps the most natural algorithmic question in this…

We consider a random permutation drawn from the set of 321-avoiding permutations of length $n$ and show that the number of occurrences of another pattern $\sigma$ has a limit distribution, after scaling by $n^{m+\ell}$ where $m$ is the…

Let $G$ be a permutation group of degree $n$ and let $s(G)$ denote the number of set-orbits of $G$. We determine $\inf(\frac {\log_2 s(G)} n)$ over all groups $G$ that satisfy certain restrictions on composition factors (i.e. $Alt(k), k >…

Each group G of nxn permutation matrices has a corresponding permutation polytope, P(G):=conv(G) in R^{nxn}. We relate the structure of P(G) to the transitivity of G. In particular, we show that if G has t nontrivial orbits, then…

Let T_k^m={\sigma \in S_k | \sigma_1=m}. We prove that the number of permutations which avoid all patterns in T_k^m equals (k-2)!(k-1)^{n+1-k} for k <= n. We then prove that for any \tau in T_k^1 (or any \tau in T_k^k), the number of…