A Curved Brunn-Minkowski Inequality for the Symmetric Group

Abstract

In this paper, we construct an injection $A \times B \rightarrow M \times M$ from the product of any two nonempty subsets of the symmetric group into the square of their midpoint set, where the metric is that corresponding to the conjugacy class of transpositions. If $A$ and $B$ are disjoint, our construction allows to inject two copies of $A \times B$ into $M \times M$. These injections imply a positively curved Brunn-Minkowski inequality for the symmetric group analogous to that obtained by Ollivier and Villani for the hypercube. However, while Ollivier and Villani's inequality is optimal, we believe that the curvature term in our inequality can be improved. We identify a hypothetical concentration inequality in the symmetric group and prove that it yields an optimally curved Brunn-Minkowski inequality.