The maximum defect over any reduced expression for a permutation and any subexpression.

Sends a Dyck path of semilength n to the noncrossing perfect matching given by matching an up-step with the corresponding down-step.
This is, for a Dyck path $D$ of semilength $n$, the perfect matching of $\{1,\dots,2n\}$ with $i < j$ being matched if $D_i$ is an up-step and $D_j$ is the down-step connected to $D_i$ by a tunnel.

Sends a permutation to its image under the Foata bijection.
The Foata bijection $\phi$ is a bijection on the set of words with no two equal letters. It can be defined by induction on the size of the word:
Given a word $w_1 w_2 ... w_n$, compute the image inductively by starting with $\phi(w_1) = w_1$.
At the $i$-th step, if $\phi(w_1 w_2 ... w_i) = v_1 v_2 ... v_i$, define $\phi(w_1 w_2 ... w_i w_{i+1})$ by placing $w_{i+1}$ on the end of the word $v_1 v_2 ... v_i$ and breaking the word up into blocks as follows.

• If $w_{i+1} \geq v_i$, place a vertical line to the right of each $v_k$ for which $w_{i+1} \geq v_k$.
• If $w_{i+1} < v_i$, place a vertical line to the right of each $v_k$ for which $w_{i+1} < v_k$.

In either case, place a vertical line at the start of the word as well. Now, within each block between vertical lines, cyclically shift the entries one place to the right.
To compute $\phi([1,4,2,5,3])$, the sequence of words is

• $1$
• $|1|4 \to 14$
• $|14|2 \to 412$
• $|4|1|2|5 \to 4125$
• $|4|125|3 \to 45123.$

In total, this gives $\phi([1,4,2,5,3]) = [4,5,1,2,3]$.
This bijection sends the major index (St000004The major index of a permutation.) to the number of inversions (St000018The number of inversions of a permutation.).

Returns the fixed point free involution whose transpositions are the pairs in the perfect matching.