The Legendre Structure of the Parisi Formula

We study easy quantum groups, a combinatorial class of orthogonal quantum groups introduced by Banica–Speicher in 2009. We show that there is a countable descending chain of easy quantum groups interpolating between Bichon’s free wreath product with the permutation group S_n and a semi-direct product of a permutation action of S_n on a free product. This reveals a series of new commutation relations interpolating between a free product construction and the tensor product. Furthermore, we prove a dichotomy result saying that every hyperoctahedral easy quantum group is either part of our new interpolating series of quantum groups or belongs to a class of semi-direct product quantum groups recently studied by the authors. This completes the classification of easy quantum groups. We also study combinatorial and operator algebraic aspects of the new interpolating series.