In mathematics, and in particular in group theory, a cyclic permutation is a permutation of the elements of some setX which maps the elements of some subsetS of X to each other in a cyclic fashion, while fixing all other elements of X. If S has k elements, the cycle is called a k-cycle. Cycles are often denoted by the list of their elements enclosed with parentheses, in the order to which they are permuted. For example, given X =, the permutation that sends 1 to 3, 3 to 2, 2 to 4 and 4 to 1 is a 4-cycle, and the permutation that sends 1 to 3, 3 to 2, 2 to 1 and 4 to 4 is a 3-cycle. On the other hand, the permutation that sends 1 to 3, 3 to 1, 2 to 4 and 4 to 2 is not a cyclic permutation because it separately permutes the pairs and. The set S is called the orbit of the cycle. Every permutation on finitely many elements can be decomposed into cycles on disjoint orbits. The cyclic parts of a permutation are cycles, thus the second example is composed of a 3-cycle and a 1-cycle and the third is composed of two 2-cycles, and denoted .
Definition
A permutation is called a cyclic permutation if and only if it has a single nontrivial cycle. For example, the permutation, written in two-line and also cycle notations, is a six-cycle; its cycle diagram is shown at right. Some authors restrict the definition to only those permutations which consist of one nontrivial cycle. For example, the permutation is a cyclic permutation under this more restrictive definition, while the preceding example is not. More formally, a permutation of a set X, viewed as a bijective function, is called a cycle if the action on X of the subgroup generated by has at most one orbit with more than a single element. This notion is most commonly used when X is a finite set; then of course the largest orbit, S, is also finite. Let be any element ofS, and put for any. If S is finite, there is a minimal number for which. Then, and is the permutation defined by and for any element of. The elements not fixed by can be pictured as A cycle can be written using the compactcycle notation . The length of a cycle is the number of elements of its largest orbit. A cycle of length k is also called a k-cycle. The orbit of a 1-cycle is called a fixed point of the permutation, but as a permutation every 1-cycle is the identity permutation. When cycle notation is used, the 1-cycles are often suppressed when no confusion will result.
Basic properties
One of the basic results on symmetric groups is that any permutation can be expressed as the product of disjoint cycles ; such cycles commute with each other, and the expression of the permutation is unique up to the order of the cycles. The multiset of lengths of the cycles in this expression is therefore uniquely determined by the permutation, and both the signature and the conjugacy class of the permutation in the symmetric group are determined by it. The number of k-cycles in the symmetric groupSn is given, for, by the following equivalent formulas A k-cycle has signature k − 1. The inverse of a cycle is given by reversing the order of the entries:. In particular, since, every two-cycle is its own inverse. Since disjoint cycles commute, the inverse of a product of disjoint cycles is the result of reversing each of the cycles separately.
Transpositions
A cycle with only two elements is called a transposition. For example, the permutation that swaps 2 and 4.
Properties
Any permutation can be expressed as the composition of transpositions—formally, they are generators for the group. In fact, when the set being permuted is for some integer, then any permutation can be expressed as a product of and so on. This follows because an arbitrary transposition can be expressed as the product of adjacent transpositions. Concretely, one can express the transposition where by moving to one step at a time, then moving back to where was, which interchanges these two and makes no other changes: The decomposition of a permutation into a product of transpositions is obtained for example by writing the permutation as a product of disjoint cycles, and then splitting iteratively each of the cycles of length 3 and longer into a product of a transposition and a cycle of length one less: This means the initial request is to move to to to and finally to Instead one may roll the elements keeping where it is by executing the right factor first. This has moved to the position of so after the first permutation, the elements and are not yet at their final positions. The transposition executed thereafter, then addresses by the index of to swap what initially were and In fact, the symmetric group is a Coxeter group, meaning that it is generated by elements of order 2, and all relations are of a certain form. One of the main results on symmetric groups states that either all of the decompositions of a given permutation into transpositions have an even number of transpositions, or they all have an odd number of transpositions. This permits the parity of a permutation to be a well-defined concept.
