A bijection $Φ$ 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 $Θ_{ij}$ of plane bipolar orientations with $i$ non-polar vertices and $j$ inner faces: $Θ_{ij}=2\frac{(i+j)!(i+j+1)!(i+j+2)!}{i!(i+1)!(i+2)!j!(j+1)!(j+2)!}$. In addition, it is shown that $Φ$ specializes into the bijection of Bernardi and Bonichon between Schnyder woods and non-crossing pairs of Dyck words.
Thomassen in 1994 published a famous proof of the fact that the choosability of a planar graph is at most 5. Zhu in 2019 generalized this result by showing that the same bound holds for Alon-Tarsi numbers of planar graphs. We present an alternative proof of that fact, derived from the results on decompositions of planar graphs into trees known as Schnyder woods. It turns out that Thomassen's technique and our proof based on Schnyder woods have a lot in common. We discuss and explain the prominent role that counterclockwise 3-orientations play in proofs based on both these approaches.
Schnyder woods are a well-known combinatorial structure for plane triangulations, which yields a decomposition into 3 spanning trees. We extend here definitions and algorithms for Schnyder woods to closed orientable surfaces of arbitrary genus. In particular, we describe a method to traverse a triangulation of genus $g$ and compute a so-called $g$-Schnyder wood on the way. As an application, we give a procedure to encode a triangulation of genus $g$ and $n$ vertices in $4n+O(g \log(n))$ bits. This matches the worst-case encoding rate of Edgebreaker in positive genus. All the algorithms present…
A Schnyder wood is an orientation and coloring of the edges of a planar map satisfying a simple local property. We propose a generalization of Schnyder woods to graphs embedded on the torus with application to graph drawing. We prove several properties on this new object. Among all we prove that a graph embedded on the torus admits such a Schnyder wood if and only if it is an essentially 3-connected toroidal map. We show that these Schnyder woods can be used to embed the universal cover of an essentially 3-connected toroidal map on an infinite and periodic orthogonal surface. Finally we use th…
Schnyder woods are particularly elegant combinatorial structures with numerous applications concerning planar triangulations and more generally 3-connected planar maps. We propose a simple generalization of Schnyder woods from the plane to maps on orientable surfaces of any genus with a special emphasis on the toroidal case. We provide a natural partition of the set of Schnyder woods of a given map into distributive lattices depending on the surface homology. In the toroidal case we show the existence of particular Schnyder woods with some global properties that are useful for optimal encoding…
In this work we consider balanced Schnyder woods for planar graphs, which are Schnyder woods where the number of incoming edges of each color at each vertex is balanced as much as possible. We provide a simple linear-time heuristic leading to obtain well balanced Schnyder woods in practice. As test applications we consider two important algorithmic problems: the computation of Schnyder drawings and of small cycle separators. While not being able to provide theoretical guarantees, our experimental results (on a wide collection of planar graphs) suggest that the use of balanced Schnyder woods le…
We propose a simple generalization of Schnyder woods from the plane to maps on orientable surfaces of higher genus. This is done in the language of angle labelings. Generalizing results of De Fraysseix and Ossona de Mendez, and Felsner, we establish a correspondence between these labelings and orientations and characterize the set of orientations of a map that correspond to such a Schnyder labeling. Furthermore, we study the set of these orientations of a given map and provide a natural partition into distributive lattices depending on the surface homology. This generalizes earlier results of …
In the study of lattice walks there are several examples of enumerative equivalences which amount to a trade-off between domain and endpoint constraints. We present a family of such bijections for simple walks in Weyl chambers which use arc diagrams in a natural way. One consequence is a set of new bijections for standard Young tableaux of bounded height. A modification of the argument in two dimensions yields a bijection between Baxter permutations and walks ending on an axis, answering a recent question of Burrill et al. (2016). Some of our arguments (and related results) are proved using Sc…
Schnyder woods are decompositions of simple triangulations into three edge-disjoint spanning trees crossing each other in a specific way. In this article, we define a generalization of Schnyder woods to $d$-angulations (plane graphs with faces of degree $d$) for all $d\geq 3$. A \emph{Schnyder decomposition} is a set of $d$ spanning forests crossing each other in a specific way, and such that each internal edge is part of exactly $d-2$ of the spanning forests. We show that a Schnyder decomposition exists if and only if the girth of the $d$-angulation is $d$. As in the case of Schnyder woods ($…
Poulalhon and Schaeffer introduced an elegant method to linearly encode a planar triangulation optimally. The method is based on performing a special depth-first search algorithm on a particular orientation of the triangulation: the minimal Schnyder wood. Recent progress toward generalizing Schnyder woods to higher genus enables us to generalize this method to the toroidal case. In the plane, the method leads to a bijection between planar triangulations and some particular trees. For the torus we obtain a similar bijection but with particular unicellular maps (maps with only one face).
We deal with the asymptotic enumeration of combinatorial structures on planar maps. Prominent instances of such problems are the enumeration of spanning trees, bipartite perfect matchings, and ice models. The notion of orientations with out-degrees prescribed by a function $å:V\to \NN$ unifies many different combinatorial structures, including the afore mentioned. We call these orientations $å$-orientations. The main focus of this paper are bounds for the maximum number of $å$-orientations that a planar map with $n$ vertices can have, for different instances of $å$. We give examples of triangu…
The Stanley lattice, Tamari lattice and Kreweras lattice are three remarkable orders defined on the set of Catalan objects of a given size. These lattices are ordered by inclusion: the Stanley lattice is an extension of the Tamari lattice which is an extension of the Kreweras lattice. The Stanley order can be defined on the set of Dyck paths of size $n$ as the relation of \emph{being above}. Hence, intervals in the Stanley lattice are pairs of non-crossing Dyck paths. In a former article, the second author defined a bijection $Φ$ between pairs of non-crossing Dyck paths and the realizers of tr…
The Baxter number can be written as $B_n = \sum_0^n Θ_{k,n-k-1}$. These numbers have first appeared in the enumeration of so-called Baxter permutations; $B_n$ is the number of Baxter permutations of size $n$, and $Θ_{k,l}$ is the number of Baxter permutations with $k$ descents and $l$ rises. With a series of bijections we identify several families of combinatorial objects counted by the numbers $Θ_{k,l}$. Apart from Baxter permutations, these include plane bipolar orientations with $k+2$ vertices and $l+2$ faces, 2-orientations of planar quadrangulations with $k+2$ white and $l+2$ black vertic…
We present a bijection between some quadrangular dissections of an hexagon and unrooted binary trees, with interesting consequences for enumeration, mesh compression and graph sampling. Our bijection yields an efficient uniform random sampler for 3-connected planar graphs, which turns out to be determinant for the quadratic complexity of the current best known uniform random sampler for labelled planar graphs [{\bf Fusy, Analysis of Algorithms 2005}]. It also provides an encoding for the set $\mathcal{P}(n)$ of $n$-edge 3-connected planar graphs that matches the entropy bound $\frac1n\log_2|\m…
