Major index on involutions

Abstract

We find the range of the major index on the various conjugacy classes of involutions in the symmetric group $S_n$. In addition to indicating the minimum and the maximum values, we show that except for the case of involutions without fixed points, all the values in the range are attained. For the conjugacy classes of involutions without fixed points, we show that the only missing values are one more than the minimum and one less than the maximum.