factorization of permutations into strongnstrong-cycles.pdfVIP

DiscreTe Mathematics 37 (1981) 255-262 25.2, North- Holland Publishing Company FACTORIZATION OF PERMUTATIONS INTO n-CYCLES* Richard P. STANLEk Bqxwtrnent of Mathemcrtics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Received 29 March 1980 Revised 24 November 1980 Using the character theory of the symmetric group ES,,,an explicit formula is derived for the number Q(V) of ways of writing a permutation TTE S;,, as a product of k n-cycles. From this the asymptotic expansion for gk(n) is derived, provided that when i. = 2, T has O(log n) fixed points. In particular, there follows a conjecture of Walkup that if 71;,EG,, is an even permutation with no fixed point ., then lim,,, gJn,,)/(n -2)! = 2. 1.Introduction Let 7r be an element of the symmetric group G, of all permutations of an n-element set. Let gr) be the number of k-tuples (ml,. . . , u,J ot cycles ai of length rz such that v = crl l l ’ uk. Thus gk (v) = 0 if either (a) v is an odd permutation and II is an odd integer, or (b) 7r is odd, n is even, and k is even, or (c) ?r is even, n is even, and k is odd. Husemoller [6, Proposition 41 attributes to Gleason the result that g,(,n) 0 for any even w. The function gr‘ was subsequently considered in [l, 2,9]. In particular, Walkup [9, p. 3161 conjectured that lim,,, gz(vJ(n -2)! = 2 where m1,w2,... is any sequence of even permutations witho