Product action Original Research Article

This paper studies the cycle indices of products of permutation groups. The main focus is on the product action of the direct product of permutation groups. The number of orbits of the product on n-tuples is trivial to compute from the numbers of orbits of the factors; on the other hand, computing the cycle index of the product is more intricate. Reconciling the two computations leads to some interesting questions about formal power series. We also discuss what happens for infinite (oligomorphic) groups and give detailed examples. Finally, we briefly turn our attention to generalised wreath products, which are a common generalisation of both the direct product with the product action and the wreath product with the imprimitive action.