Proof of a conjecture of Green and Liebeck on codes in symmetric groups

Abstract

Let $A$ and $B$ be subsets of a finite group $G$ and $r$ a positive integer. If for every $g\in G$, there are precisely $r$ pairs $(a,b)\in A\times B$ such that $g=ab$, then $B$ is called a code in $G$ with respect to $A$ and we write $r G=A\boldsymbol{\cdot}B$. If in addition $B$ is a subgroup of $G$, then we say that $B$ is a subgroup code in $G$. In this paper we resolve a conjecture by Green and Liebeck \cite[Conjecture 2.3]{Green20} on certain subgroup codes in the symmetric group $S_n$. Let $n>2k$ and let $j$ be such that $2^j\leqslant k<2^{j+1}$. Suppose that $X$ is a conjugacy class in $S_n$ containing $x$, and $Y_k$ is the subgroup $S_k\times S_{n-k}$ of $S_n$, where the factor $S_k$ permutes the subset $\{1,\ldots,k\}$ and the factor $S_{n-k}$ permutes the subset $\{k+1,\ldots,n\}$. We prove that $r S_n=X\boldsymbol{\cdot}Y_k$ for some positive integer $r$ if and only if the cycle type of $x$ has exactly one cycle of length $2^i$ for $0\leqslant i\leqslant j$ and all other cycles have length at least $k+1$. We also propose several problems concerning the existence of certain subgroup codes in a finite group $G$ with respect to a conjugation-closed subset in $G$.