Papers Published
Abstract:
We give refined estimates for the discrete time and continuous time versions of some basic random walks on the symmetric and alternating groups Sn and An. We consider the following models: random transposition, transpose top with random, random insertion, and walks generated by the uniform measure on a conjugacy class. In the case of random walks on Sn and An generated by the uniform measure on a conjugacy class, we show that in continuous time the $\ell^2$-cutoff has a lower bound of (n/2) log n. This result, along with the results of M¨uller, Schlage- Puchta and Roichman, demonstrates that the continuous time version of these walks may take much longer to reach stationarity than its discrete time counterpart.