English

Bijective counting of plane bipolar orientations and Schnyder woods

Combinatorics 2009-03-20 v3

Abstract

A bijection Φ\Phi is presented between plane bipolar orientations with prescribed numbers of vertices and faces, and non-intersecting triples of upright lattice paths with prescribed extremities. This yields a combinatorial proof of the following formula due to R. Baxter for the number Θij\Theta_{ij} of plane bipolar orientations with ii non-polar vertices and jj inner faces: Θij=2(i+j)!(i+j+1)!(i+j+2)!i!(i+1)!(i+2)!j!(j+1)!(j+2)!\Theta_{ij}=2\frac{(i+j)!(i+j+1)!(i+j+2)!}{i!(i+1)!(i+2)!j!(j+1)!(j+2)!}. In addition, it is shown that Φ\Phi specializes into the bijection of Bernardi and Bonichon between Schnyder woods and non-crossing pairs of Dyck words.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0803.0400,
  title  = {Bijective counting of plane bipolar orientations and Schnyder woods},
  author = {Eric Fusy and Dominique Poulalhon and Gilles Schaeffer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0803.0400},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

An extended abstract describing the bijection without proofs has appeared in the proceedings of Eurocomb'07

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:18:06.406Z