The structure of unicellular maps, and a connection between maps of positive genus and planar labelled trees

A unicellular map is a map which has only one face. We give a bijection between a dominant subset of rooted unicellular maps of fixed genus and a set of rooted plane trees with distinguished vertices. The bijection applies as well to the case of labelled unicellular maps, which are related to all rooted maps by Marcus and Schaeffer's bijection. This gives an immediate derivation of the asymptotic number of unicellular maps of given genus, and a simple bijective proof of a formula of Lehman and Walsh on the number of triangulations with one vertex. From the labelled case, we deduce an expression of the asymptotic number of maps of genus g with n edges involving the ISE random measure, and an explicit characterization of the limiting profile and radius of random bipartite quadrangulations of genus g in terms of the ISE.Comment: 27pages, 6 figures, to appear in PTRF. Version 2 includes corrections from referee report in sections 6-

Counting factorizations of Coxeter elements into products of reflections

In this paper, we count factorizations of Coxeter elements in well-generated complex reflection groups into products of reflections. We obtain a simple product formula for the exponential generating function of such factorizations, which is expressed uniformly in terms of natural parameters of the group. In the case of factorizations of minimal length, we recover a formula due to P. Deligne, J. Tits and D. Zagier in the real case and to D. Bessis in the complex case. For the symmetric group, our formula specializes to a formula of D. M. Jackson.Comment: 38 pages, including 18 pages appendix. To appear in Journal of the London Mathematical Society. v3: minor changes and corrected references; v2: added extended discussion on the definition of Coxeter element

A bijection for rooted maps on general surfaces

We extend the Marcus-Schaeffer bijection between orientable rooted bipartite quadrangulations (equivalently: rooted maps) and orientable labeled one-face maps to the case of all surfaces, that is orientable and non-orientable as well. This general construction requires new ideas and is more delicate than the special orientable case, but it carries the same information. In particular, it leads to a uniform combinatorial interpretation of the counting exponent $\frac{5(h-1)}{2}$ for both orientable and non-orientable rooted connected maps of Euler characteristic $2-2h$, and of the algebraicity of their generating functions, similar to the one previously obtained in the orientable case via the Marcus-Schaeffer bijection. It also shows that the renormalization factor $n^{1/4}$ for distances between vertices is universal for maps on all surfaces: the renormalized profile and radius in a uniform random pointed bipartite quadrangulation on any fixed surface converge in distribution when the size $n$ tends to infinity. Finally, we extend the Miermont and Ambj{\o}rn-Budd bijections to the general setting of all surfaces. Our construction opens the way to the study of Brownian surfaces for any compact 2-dimensional manifold.Comment: v2: 55 pages, 22 figure

Counting unicellular maps on non-orientable surfaces

A unicellular map is the embedding of a connected graph in a surface in such a way that the complement of the graph is a topological disk. In this paper we present a bijective link between unicellular maps on a non-orientable surface and unicellular maps of a lower topological type, with distinguished vertices. From that we obtain a recurrence equation that leads to (new) explicit counting formulas for non-orientable unicellular maps of fixed topology. In particular, we give exact formulas for the precubic case (all vertices of degree 1 or 3), and asymptotic formulas for the general case, when the number of edges goes to infinity. Our strategy is inspired by recent results obtained by the second author for the orientable case, but significant novelties are introduced: in particular we construct an involution which, in some sense, "averages" the effects of non-orientability

Generating functions of bipartite maps on orientable surfaces

We compute, for each genus $g\geq 0$, the generating function $L_g\equiv L_g(t;p_1,p_2,\dots)$ of (labelled) bipartite maps on the orientable surface of genus $g$, with control on all face degrees. We exhibit an explicit change of variables such that for each $g$, $L_g$ is a rational function in the new variables, computable by an explicit recursion on the genus. The same holds for the generating function $F_g$ of rooted bipartite maps. The form of the result is strikingly similar to the Goulden/Jackson/Vakil and Goulden/Guay-Paquet/Novak formulas for the generating functions of classical and monotone Hurwitz numbers respectively, which suggests stronger links between these models. Our result complements recent results of Kazarian and Zograf, who studied the case where the number of faces is bounded, in the equivalent formalism of dessins d'enfants. Our proofs borrow some ideas from Eynard's "topological recursion" that he applied in particular to even-faced maps (unconventionally called "bipartite maps" in his work). However, the present paper requires no previous knowledge of this topic and comes with elementary (complex-analysis-free) proofs written in the perspective of formal power series.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figure

The vertical profile of embedded trees

Consider a rooted binary tree with n nodes. Assign with the root the abscissa 0, and with the left (resp. right) child of a node of abscissa i the abscissa i-1 (resp. i+1). We prove that the number of binary trees of size n having exactly n_i nodes at abscissa i, for l =< i =< r (with n = sum_i n_i), is $$\frac{n_0}{n_l n_r} {{n_{-1}+n_1} \choose {n_0-1}} \prod_{l\le i\le r \atop i\not = 0}{{n_{i-1}+n_{i+1}-1} \choose {n_i-1}},$$ with n_{l-1}=n_{r+1}=0. The sequence (n_l, ..., n_{-1};n_0, ..., n_r) is called the vertical profile of the tree. The vertical profile of a uniform random tree of size n is known to converge, in a certain sense and after normalization, to a random mesure called the integrated superbrownian excursion, which motivates our interest in the profile. We prove similar looking formulas for other families of trees whose nodes are embedded in Z. We also refine these formulas by taking into account the number of nodes at abscissa j whose parent lies at abscissa i, and/or the number of vertices at abscissa i having a prescribed number of children at abscissa j, for all i and j. Our proofs are bijective.Comment: 47 page

Simple recurrence formulas to count maps on orientable surfaces

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 look 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.Comment: Version 3: We changed the title once again. We also corrected some misprints, gave another equivalent formulation of the main result in terms of vertices and faces (Thm. 5), and added complements on bivariate generating functions. Version 2: We extended the main result to include the ability to track the number of faces. The title of the paper has been changed accordingl

A new combinatorial identity for unicellular maps, via a direct bijective approach.

International audienceWe give a bijective operation that relates unicellular maps of given genus to unicellular maps of lower genus, with distinguished vertices. This gives a new combinatorial identity relating the number $\epsilon_g(n)$ of unicellular maps of size $n$ and genus $g$ to the numbers $\epsilon _j(n)$'s, for $j \lt g$. In particular for each $g$ this enables to compute the closed-form formula for $\epsilon_g(n)$ much more easily than with other known identities, like the Harer-Zagier formula. From the combinatorial point of view, we give an explanation to the fact that $\epsilon_g(n)=R_g(n) \mathrm{Cat}(n)$, where $\mathrm{Cat}(n$) is the $n$-th Catalan number and $R_g$ is a polynomial of degree $3g$, with explicit interpretation.On décrit une opération bijective qui relie les cartes à une face de genre donné à des cartes à une face de genre inférieur, portant des sommets marqués. Cela conduit à une nouvelle identité combinatoire reliant le nombre $\epsilon_g(n)$ de cartes à une face de taille $n$ et genre $g$ aux nombres $\epsilon _j(n)$, pour $j \lt g$. En particulier, pour tout $g$, cela permet de calculer la formule close donnant $\epsilon_g(n)$ bien plus facilement qu'à l'aide des autres identités connues, comme la formule d'Harer-Zagier. Du point de vue combinatoire, nous donnons une explication au fait que $\epsilon _g(n)=R_g(n) \mathrm{Cat}(n)$, où $\mathrm{Cat}(n)$ est le $n$ième nombre de Catalan et $R_g$ est un polynôme de degré $3g$, à l'interprétation explicite