Foatic actions of the symmetric group and fixed-point homomesy

Abstract

We study maps on the set of permutations of n generated by the R\'enyi-Foata map intertwined with other dihedral symmetries (of a permutation considered as a 0-1 matrix). Iterating these maps leads to dynamical systems that in some cases exhibit interesting orbit structures, e.g., every orbit size being a power of two, and homomesic statistics (ones which have the same average over each orbit). In particular, the number of fixed points (aka 1-cycles) of a permutation appears to be homomesic with respect to three of these maps, even in one case where the orbit structures are far from nice. For the most interesting such "Foatic" action, we give a heap analysis and recursive structure that allows us to prove the fixed-point homomesy and orbit properties, but two other cases remain conjectural.