RSK-Complete Cycle Decompositions

Abstract

We characterize the class of cycle decompositions that can achieve all Young tableau shapes (except the trivial ones with a single row or a single column) under the Robinson--Schensted--Knuth (RSK) correspondence, a property that we call RSK-completeness. We prove that for even $n$, cyclic permutations comprise the only fixed cycle decomposition that is RSK-complete. For odd $n$, cyclic permutations and almost cyclic permutations which have a cycle of length $n-1$ are the only RSK-complete cycle decompositions.