A Random Walk in Representations

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Degree type
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate group
Mathematics
Discipline
Subject
Mathematics
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
2015-11-16T20:14:00-08:00
Distributor
Related resources
Contributor
Abstract

The unifying objective of this thesis is to find the mixing time of the Markov chain on $S_n$ formed by applying a random $n$-cycle to a deck of $n$ cards and following with repeated random transpositions. This process can be viewed as a Markov chain on the partitions of $n$ that starts at $(n)$, making it a natural counterpart to the random transposition walk, which starts at $(1^n)$. By considering the Fourier transform of the increment distribution on the group representations of $S_n$ and then computing the characters of the representations, Diaconis and Shahshahani showed in \cite{DS81} that the order of mixing for the random transposition walks is $n\ln n$. We adapt this approach to find an upper bound for the mixing time of the $n$-cycle-to-transpositions shuffle. To obtain a lower bound, we derive the distribution of the number of fixed points for the chain using the method of moments. In the process, we give a nice closed-form formula for the irreducible representation decomposition of tensor powers of the defining representation of $S_n$. Along the way, we also look at the more general $m$-cycle-to-transpositions chain ($m \le n$) and give an upper bound for the mixing time of the $m=n-1$ case as well as characterize the expected number of fixed points in the general case where $m$ is an arbitrary function of $n$.

Advisor
Robin A. Pemantle
Date of degree
2014-01-01
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation