A character-theoretic approach to embeddings of rooted maps in an orientable surface of given genus

Abstract

The group algebra of the symmetric group and properties of the irreducible characters are used to derive combinatorial properties of embeddings of rooted maps in orientable surfaces of arbitrary genus. In particular, we show that there exists, for each genus, a correspondence between the set of rooted quadrangulations and a set of rooted maps of all lower genera with a distinguished subset of vertices.