C.Y. Amy Pang
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A Hopf-power Markov chain on compositions
dmtcs:2316 -
Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science,
January 1, 2013,
DMTCS Proceedings vol. AS, 25th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC 2013)
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https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.2316
A Hopf-power Markov chain on compositions
Authors: C.Y. Amy Pang 1
0000-0003-1191-4943
C.Y. Amy Pang
1 Department of Mathematics [Stanford]
In a recent paper, Diaconis, Ram and I constructed Markov chains using the coproduct-then-product map of a combinatorial Hopf algebra. We presented an algorithm for diagonalising a large class of these "Hopf-power chains", including the Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds model of riffle-shuffling of a deck of cards and a rock-breaking model. A very restrictive condition from that paper is removed in my thesis, and this extended abstract focuses on one application of the improved theory. Here, I use a new technique of lumping Hopf-power chains to show that the Hopf-power chain on the algebra of quasisymmetric functions is the induced chain on descent sets under riffle-shuffling. Moreover, I relate its right and left eigenfunctions to Garsia-Reutenauer idempotents and ribbon characters respectively, from which I recover an analogous result of Diaconis and Fulman (2012) concerning the number of descents under riffle-shuffling.