On February 4, 2025, Jang Soo Kim (김장수) from Sungkyunkwan University gave a talk on the maximum of the minimum number of generators to represent an element in a monoid of functions on a fixed finite set and its connection to the minimum feedback arc set of a tournament at the Discrete Math Seminar. The title of his talk was “Longest elements in a semigroup of functions and Slater indices“.
The group of permutations on is generated by simple transpositions . The length of a permutation is defined to be the minimum number of generators whose product is . It is well-known that the longest element in has length . Let be the semigroup of functions , which are generated by the simple transpositions and the function given by and for . The length of a function is defined to be the minimum number of these generators whose product is . In this talk, we study the length of longest elements in . We also find a connection with the Slater index of a tournament of the
complete graph . This is joint work with Yasuhide Numata.