Central limit theorem for the prefix exchange distance under Ewens sampling formula

Abstract The prefix exchange distance of a permutation is the length of its shortest factorisation into transpositions that all contain 1. Using a probabilistic approach, we obtain expressions for the mean and the variance, and prove the asymptotic normality of the distribution of this distance for a random permutation verifying the Ewens sampling formula. Analogous results in the uniform setting follow as simple corollaries.