On the Subgroup Distance Problem

We investigate the computational complexity of finding an element of a permutation group H subset S_n with a minimal distance to a given pi in S_n , for different metrics on S_n . We assume that H is given by a set of generators, such that the problem cannot be solved in polynomial time by exhaustive enumeration. For the case of the Cayley Distance, this problem has been shown to be NP-hard, even if H is abelian of exponent two Pinch, 2006. We present a much simpler proof for this result, which also works for the Hamming Distance, the l\_p distance, Lee's Distance, Kendall's tau, and Ulam's Distance. Moreover, we give an NP-hardness proof for the l\_oo distance using a different reduction idea. Finally, we settle the complexity of the corresponding fixed-parameter and maximization problems