The center of the wreath product of symmetric groups algebra

Abstract

We consider the wreath product of two symmetric groups as a group of blocks permutations and we study its conjugacy classes. We give a polynomiality property for the structure coefficients of the center of the wreath product of symmetric groups algebra. This allows us to recover an old result of Farahat and Higman about the polynomiality of the structure coefficients of the center of the symmetric group algebra and to generalize our recent result about the polynomiality property of the structure coefficients of the center of the hyperoctahedral group algebra. A particular attention is paid to the cases when the blocks contain two or three elements.