Title
Simple recurrence formulas to count maps on orientable surfaces
Abstract
We establish a simple recurrence formula for the number Q g n of rooted orientable maps counted by edges and genus. We also give a weighted variant for the generating polynomial Q g n ( x ) where x is a parameter taking the number of faces of the map into account, or equivalently a simple recurrence formula for the refined numbers M g i , j that count maps by genus, vertices, and faces. These formulas give by far the fastest known way of computing these numbers, or the fixed-genus generating functions, especially for large g. In the very particular case of one-face maps, we recover the Harer-Zagier recurrence formula.Our main formula is a consequence of the KP equation for the generating function of bipartite maps, coupled with a Tutte equation, and it was apparently unnoticed before. It is similar in appearance to the one discovered by Goulden and Jackson for triangulations, and indeed our method to go from the KP equation to the recurrence formula can be seen as a combinatorial simplification of Goulden and Jackson's approach (together with one additional combinatorial trick). All these formulas have a very combinatorial flavour, but finding a bijective interpretation is currently unsolved.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1016/j.jcta.2015.01.005
J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A
Keywords
Field
DocType
quadrangulations,maps on surfaces,kp hierarchy,enumeration,harer-zagier formula
Recurrence formula,Discrete mathematics,Generating function,Generalized map,Combinatorics,Bijection,Polynomial,Vertex (geometry),Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation,Bipartite graph,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
133
C
Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 133:58--75 (2015)
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.38
12
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sean R. Carrell110.38
Guillaume Chapuy27311.25