English

Complexity of Constructing Minimal Faithful Permutation Representations for Fitting-free Groups

Data Structures and Algorithms 2026-05-07 v4 Computational Complexity Group Theory

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the complexity of computing minimal faithful permutation representations for groups without abelian normal subgroups (a.k.a. Fitting-free groups). When our groups are given as quotients of permutation groups, we exhibit a polynomial-time algorithm for constructing such representations. Furthermore, in the setting of permutation groups, we obtain an NC\textsf{NC} procedure for computing the minimal faithful permutation degree, and a randomized NC\textsf{NC} (RNC\textsf{RNC}) algorithm for computing a minimal faithful permutation representation. This improves upon the work of Das and Thakkar (STOC 2024, SIAM J. Comput. 2026), who established a Las Vegas polynomial-time algorithm for computing the minimal faithful permutation degree for this class in the setting of permutation groups.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.16039,
  title  = {Complexity of Constructing Minimal Faithful Permutation Representations for Fitting-free Groups},
  author = {Michael Levet and Pranjal Srivastava and Dhara Thakkar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.16039},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

In [v3], we computed the minimal faithful permutation degree. For this new version [v4], we also compute a minimal faithful permutation representation. Version [v3] corresponds to our FCT 2025 paper

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:19:35.084Z