On the Laplacian spectral gap of generalized pancake graphs

The generalized pancake graph $P(m,n)$ is the Cayley graph of the group of colored permutations $\mathbb{Z}_m\wr S_n=(\mathbb{Z}_m)^n\rtimes S_n$ generated by generalized prefix reversals. In this paper, we establish that, for all $m,n\geq2$, the spectral gap $γ(P(m,n))$ of the normalized Laplacian satisfies $α_m/n\leqγ(P(m,n))\leq1/n$, where $α_m$ is a positive constant that depends only on $m$. As a consequence, for every fixed $m\geq2$, $γ(P(m,n))$ is $Θ_m(1/n)$ as $n\to\infty$. The proof combines Cesi's semi-recursive spectral-gap inequality with a Fourier decomposition of the appropriate operators associated with a coset Schreier graph of color-position pairs. For fixed $n\geq2$, we also establish that $γ(P(m,n))$ is $Θ_n(m^{-2})$ as $m\to\infty$. This disproves a conjecture of Blanco and Buehrle asserting that, for fixed $n$, the corresponding undirected generalized pancake graphs form an expander family.