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Fixed Point Homing Shuffles

Combinatorics 2025-08-20 v3

Abstract

We study a family of maps from SnSnS_n \to S_n we call fixed point homing shuffles. These maps generalize a few known problems such as Conway's Topswops, and a card shuffling process studied by Gweneth McKinley. We show that the iterates of these homing shuffles always converge, and characterize the set UnU_n of permutations that no homing shuffle sorts. We also study a homing shuffle that sorts anything not in UnU_n, and find how many iterations it takes to converge in the worst case.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.22548,
  title  = {Fixed Point Homing Shuffles},
  author = {Jonathan Parlett},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.22548},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Updated formatting to fit with DMTCS requirements

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:40:25.890Z