Representation theories of some towers of algebras related to the symmetric groups and their Hecke algebras

We study the representation theory of three towers of algebras which are related to the symmetric groups and their Hecke algebras. The first one is constructed as the algebras generated simultaneously by the elementary transpositions and the elementary sorting operators acting on permutations. The two others are the monoid algebras of nondecreasing functions and nondecreasing parking functions. For these three towers, we describe the structure of simple and indecomposable projective modules, together with the Cartan map. The Grothendieck algebras and coalgebras given respectively by the induction product and the restriction coproduct are also given explicitly. This yields some new interpretations of the classical bases of quasi-symmetric and noncommutative symmetric functions as well as some new bases.Comment: 12 pages. Presented at FPSAC'06 San-Diego, June 2006 (minor explanation improvements w.r.t. the previous version

Some relational structures with polynomial growth and their associated algebras II: Finite generation

The profile of a relational structure $R$ is the function $\varphi_R$ which counts for every integer $n$ the number, possibly infinite, $\varphi_R(n)$ of substructures of $R$ induced on the $n$-element subsets, isomorphic substructures being identified. If $\varphi_R$ takes only finite values, this is the Hilbert function of a graded algebra associated with $R$, the age algebra $A(R)$, introduced by P.~J.~Cameron. In a previous paper, we studied the relationship between the properties of a relational structure and those of their algebra, particularly when the relational structure $R$ admits a finite monomorphic decomposition. This setting still encompasses well-studied graded commutative algebras like invariant rings of finite permutation groups, or the rings of quasi-symmetric polynomials. In this paper, we investigate how far the well know algebraic properties of those rings extend to age algebras. The main result is a combinatorial characterization of when the age algebra is finitely generated. In the special case of tournaments, we show that the age algebra is finitely generated if and only if the profile is bounded. We explore the Cohen-Macaulay property in the special case of invariants of permutation groupoids. Finally, we exhibit sufficient conditions on the relational structure that make naturally the age algebra into a Hopf algebra.Comment: 27 pages; submitte

The biHecke monoid of a finite Coxeter group

The usual combinatorial model for the 0-Hecke algebra of the symmetric group is to consider the algebra (or monoid) generated by the bubble sort operators. This construction generalizes to any finite Coxeter group W. The authors previously introduced the Hecke group algebra, constructed as the algebra generated simultaneously by the bubble sort and antisort operators, and described its representation theory. In this paper, we consider instead the monoid generated by these operators. We prove that it has |W| simple and projective modules. In order to construct a combinatorial model for the simple modules, we introduce for each w in W a combinatorial module whose support is the interval [1,w] in right weak order. This module yields an algebra, whose representation theory generalizes that of the Hecke group algebra. This involves the introduction of a w-analogue of the combinatorics of descents of W and a generalization to finite Coxeter groups of blocks of permutation matrices.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, submitted to FPSAC'1

Spectral gap for random-to-random shuffling on linear extensions

In this paper, we propose a new Markov chain which generalizes random-to-random shuffling on permutations to random-to-random shuffling on linear extensions of a finite poset of size $n$. We conjecture that the second largest eigenvalue of the transition matrix is bounded above by $(1+1/n)(1-2/n)$ with equality when the poset is disconnected. This Markov chain provides a way to sample the linear extensions of the poset with a relaxation time bounded above by $n^2/(n+2)$ and a mixing time of $O(n^2 \log n)$. We conjecture that the mixing time is in fact $O(n \log n)$ as for the usual random-to-random shuffling.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures; v2: typos fixed plus extra information in figures; v3: added explicit conjecture 2.2 + Section 3.6 on the diameter of the Markov Chain as evidence + misc minor improvements; v4: fixed bibliograph