The Poset of Conjugacy Classes and Decomposition of Products in the Symmetric Group

Abstract

AbstractThe action by multiplication of the class of transpositions of the symmetric group on the other conjugacy classes defines a graded poset as described by Birkhoff ([2]). In this paper, the edges of this poset are given a weight and the structure obtained is called the poset of conjugacy classes of the symmetric group. We use weights of chains in the posets to obtain new formulas for the decomposition of products of conjugacy classes of the symmetric group in its group algebra as linear combinations of conjugacy classes and we derive a new identity involving partitions of n.