New Bounds on the Size of Permutation Codes With Minimum Kendall $\tau$-distance of Three

Abstract

We study $P(n,3)$, the size of the largest subset of the set of all permutations $S_n$ with minimum Kendall $\tau$-distance $3$. Using a combination of group theory and integer programming, we reduced the upper bound of $P(p,3)$ from $(p-1)!-1$ to $(p-1)!-\lceil \frac{p}{3}\rceil +2\le (p-1)!-2$ for all primes $p\ge 11$. In special cases where $n$ is equal to $6,7,11,13,14,15$ and $17$ we reduced the upper bound of $P(n,3)$ by $3,3,9,11,1,1$ and $4$, respectively.