Random walks on wreath products of groups (Q1866060)

\textit{P. Diaconis} and \textit{M. Shahshahani} [Z. Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie Verw. Geb. 57, 159-179 (1981; Zbl 0485.60006)] have shown for a certain random walk on the symmetric group \(S_n\) that if \(k= \frac 12 n\log n+cn\) for some constant \(c>0\), then the \(\ell^2\)- (and hence also the total variation) distance of \(P^{*k}\) and \(U\) tends to zero \((P\) being a probability measure on \(S_n\), and \(U\) denoting the uniform distribution). On the other hand, \(k=\frac 12\log n-cn\) steps are necessary for the \(\ell^2\)-distance of \(P^{*k}\) and \(U\) to tend to zero. In the present paper it is shown that similar results hold for random walks on the complete monomial group \(G\wr S_n\) that is generated by random transpositions, followed by independent randomizations of the transposed elements. Here, \(G\wr S_n\) denotes the wreath product of the group \(G\) with the group \(S_n\).