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18 votes
2 answers
984 views

A direct proof of the Harer-Zagier recursion enumerating the ways to paste a 2n-gon to get a genus g surface?

In a 1986 paper, Harer and Zagier proved the recursion: $$(n+1)e(g,n)=(4n-2)e(g,n-1)+(2n-1)(n-1)(2n-3)e(g-1,n-2)$$ where e(g,n) is the number of ways of grouping sides $S_1...S_{2n}$ of a 2n-gon ...
Alfredo Hubard's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
174 views

Reference for the image of the adjoint to the differential in graph cohomology (which yields STU & IHX)?

One can define cochain complexes of (combinatorial) graphs, where each term is a vector space of linear combinations of certain (isomorphism classes of) graphs, and where the differential $d$ is a ...
Robin Koytcheff's user avatar