Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2017
We prove that Boolean functions on $S_{n}$, whose Fourier transform is highly concentrated on irreducible representations indexed by partitions of
$n$ whose largest part has size at least
$n-t$, are close to being unions of cosets of stabilizers of
$t$-tuples. We also obtain an edge-isoperimetric inequality for the transposition graph on
$S_{n}$ which is asymptotically sharp for subsets of
$S_{n}$ of size
$n!/\text{poly}(n)$, using eigenvalue techniques. We then combine these two results to obtain a sharp edge-isoperimetric inequality for subsets of
$S_{n}$ of size
$(n-t)!$, where
$n$ is large compared to
$t$, confirming a conjecture of Ben Efraim in these cases.