Generator Sets for the Alternating Group

Although the alternating group is an index 2 subgroup of the symmetric group, there is no generating set that gives a Coxeter structure on it. Various generating sets were suggested and studied by Bourbaki, Mitsuhashi, Regev and Roichman, Vershik and Vserminov, and others. In a recent work of Brenti, Reiner and Roichman, it is explained that palindromes in Mitsuhashi’s generating set play a role similar to that of reflections in a Coxeter system. We study in detail the length function with respect to the set of palindromes. Results include an explicit combinatorial description, a generating function, and an interesting connection to Broder’s restricted Stirling numbers.