Decomposable shuffles

Abstract

We develop a combinatorial and order-theoretic framework for shuffles, understood as ordered concatenations of indexed families of sequences that induce total orders on the natural numbers. Motivated by the classical \v{S}arkovski\u{i} order, we introduce elementary building blocks that encode finite and infinite order patterns and focus on decomposable shuffles constructed from finite ordinals together with $\omega$ and its dual $\omega^*$. We define representations that allow individual elements to be located within a shuffle and show how suitable structural conditions yield total orders on $\mathbb{N}$