English

Ribbon decomposition and twisted Hurwitz numbers

Combinatorics 2022-01-28 v3 Algebraic Geometry

Abstract

Ribbon decomposition is a way to obtain a surface with boundary (compact, not necessarily oriented) from a collection of disks by joining them with narrow ribbons attached to segments of the boundary. Counting ribbon decompositions gives rise to a "twisted" version of the classical Hurwitz numbers (studied earlier in \cite{CD} in a different context) and of the cut-and-join equation. We also provide an algebraic description of these numbers and an explicit formula for them in terms of zonal polynomials.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.13861,
  title  = {Ribbon decomposition and twisted Hurwitz numbers},
  author = {Yurii Burman and Raphaël Fesler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.13861},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

21 pages, 4 figures. v2 : The previous version of the paper was revised (including correction of some theorems) and completely rewritten ; v3 : minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:38:14.714Z