A probabilistic approach to the Yang--Baxter equation and skew braces

Abstract

We investigate finite non-degenerate set-theoretic solutions to the Yang--Baxter equation and skew braces using a probabilistic approach. We introduce four probabilities that measure how far a solution is from being a flip, but in different ways. Our main results state that for solutions arising from skew braces, these probabilities exhibit a rigid behaviour --- apart from a finite list of exceptional values (which we show to occur by means of explicit examples), they admit an upper bound that is slightly above $\frac{1}{2}$. In the skew brace setting, these probabilities measure how far the underlying skew brace is from being a trivial brace (in two different ways: one via the annihilator and the other via the socle), a trivial skew brace, and an almost trivial skew brace. We also introduce a probability that is related to the indecomposable components of a solution, and a probability that measures how close an arbitrary bijective non-degenerate map is to being a solution. In contrast to our main results, these two probabilities do not exhibit a discrete behaviour near $1$ --- they can be made arbitrarily close to $1$.