Cayley graphs on the symmetric group generated by initial reversals have unit spectral gap

Abstract

In a recent paper Gunnells, Scott and Walden have determined the complete spectrum of the Schreier graph on the symmetric group corresponding to the Young subgroup Sn-2 x S2 and generated by initial reversals. In particular they find that the first nonzero eigenvalue, or spectral gap, of the Laplacian is always 1, and report that "empirical evidence" suggests that this also holds for the corresponding Cayley graph. We provide a simple proof of this last assertion, based on the decomposition of the Laplacian of Cayley graphs, into a direct sum of irreducible representation matrices of the symmetric group.