Together with a characteristic function, idempotent permutations uniquely
determine idempotent maps, as well as their linearly ordered arrangement
simultaneously. Furthermore, in-place linear time transformations are possible
between them. Hence, they may be important for succinct data structures,
information storing, sorting and searching.
In this study, their combinatorial interpretation is given and their
application on sorting is examined. Given an array of n integer keys each in
[1,n], if it is allowed to modify the keys in the range [-n,n], idempotent
permutations make it possible to obtain linearly ordered arrangement of the
keys in O(n) time using only 4log(n) bits, setting the theoretical lower bound
of time and space complexity of sorting. If it is not allowed to modify the
keys out of the range [1,n], then n+4log(n) bits are required where n of them
is used to tag some of the keys.Comment: 32 page