Elder's conjecture on one-element commutation classes

Let n≥1n\geq 1 and let σ∈Sn+1\sigma\in\mathfrak{S}_{n+1}. Write R(σ)R(\sigma) for the set of reduced words of σ\sigma and C(σ)C(\sigma) for the set of commutation classes of reduced words. Elder's conjecture. For all σ∈Sn+1\sigma\in\mathfrak{S}_{n+1},

0≤∣C(σ)∣≤12∣R(σ)∣+1.0\leq |C(\sigma)|\leq\frac{1}{2}|R(\sigma)|+1.

This conjecture was proposed by Elder and concerns the number of commutation classes relative to the number of reduced words. The paper establishes a bound of four for the number of one-element commutation classes, but the conjecture itself is not resolved here.

References

Primary source

Ricardo Mamede, José Luis Santos and Diogo Soares, “Maximum number of one-element commutation classes of a permutation”, arXiv:2601.09395 (2026).

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