On Conjugacy Classes of Derangements in Symmetric and Alternating Groups

Abstract

In this article, we prove two conjectures of Burness and Fusari [Timothy Burness and Marco Fusari, On derangements in simple permutation groups, Forum Math. Sigma 13 (2025)] concerning the powers and products of conjugacy classes of derangements in the symmetric and alternating groups: (1) We show that there exist two conjugacy classes $C$ and $D$ of derangements in $S_n$ such that $S_n=C^2\cup CD$, and (2) We show that there exists a conjugacy class $C$ of derangements in $A_n$ such that $C^2=A_n$, whenever $n\equiv 3(\text{mod}4)$. In fact, our result concerning the second conjecture holds in a considerably more general setting, which also answers affirmatively a question posed by Bertram [Edward Bertram, Even permutations as a product of two conjugate cycles, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 12 (1972), 368-380] in a particular case. Moreover, we show that any conjugacy class $C$ of derangements in $S_n$ (resp. $A_n$) contains a pair of elements that generate $S_n$ or $A_n$ (resp. $A_n$), unless $C$ is the conjugacy class of fixed-point-free involutions.