Spectral comparison on Specht modules and mixing of the interchange process

Abstract: We characterize the cases in which the minimal eigenvalues of interchange-process Laplacians on two Specht modules can be compared up to a positive multiplicative constant, independent of the edge rates. In the comparable cases, we establish an inverse-polynomial lower bound for this constant. We conjecture that the constant can always be taken to be 2/3. We apply these ideas to the mixing times of the interchange and exclusion processes. Using the comparison method of Hermon, Kozma and Salez, we prove that our conjecture implies a conjecture of Oliveira on the mixing time of the interchange process. We also obtain unconditional mixing-time bounds for both processes.