We introduce a model of tree-rooted planar maps weighted by their number of 2-connected blocks. We study its enumerative properties and prove that it undergoes a phase transition. We give the distribution of the size of the largest 2-connected blocks in the three regimes (subcritical, critical and supercritical) and further establish that the scaling limit is the Brownian Continuum Random Tree in the critical and supercritical regimes, with respective rescalings √{n/log(n)} and √n.

Given a large graph G and k agents on this graph, we consider the Voronoi tessellation induced by the graph distance. Each agent gets control of the portion of the graph that is closer to itself than to any other agent. We study the limit law of the vector Vor: = (V1/n, V2/n, …, Vk/n), whose i'th coordinate records the fraction of vertices of G controlled by the i'th agent, as n tends to infinity. We show that if G is a uniform random tree, and the agents are placed uniformly at random, the limit law of Vor is uniform on the (k – 1)-dimensional simplex. In particular, when k = 2, the two agents each get a uniform random fraction of the territory. In fact, we prove the result directly on the Brownian continuum random tree (CRT), and we also prove the same result for a “higher genus” analogue of the CRT that we call the continuum random unicellular map, indexed by a genus parameter g ≥ 0. As a key step of independent interest, we study the case when G is a random planar embedded graph with a finite number of faces. The main idea of the proof is to show that Vor has the same distribution as another partition of mass Int: = (I1/n, I2/n, …, Ik/n) where Ij is the contour length separating the i-th agent from the next one in clockwise order around the graph.

We consider the problem of computing a spherical crossing-free geodesic drawing of a planar graph: this problem, as well as the closely related spherical parameterization problem, has attracted a lot of attention in the last two decades both in theory and in practice, motivated by a number of applications ranging from texture mapping to mesh remeshing and morphing. Our main concern is to design and implement a linear time algorithm for the computation of spherical drawings provided with theoretical guarantees. While not being aesthetically pleasing, our method is extremely fast and can be used as initial placer for spherical iterative methods and spring embedders. We provide experimental comparison with initial placers based on planar Tutte parameterization. Finally we explore the use of spherical drawings as initial layouts for (Euclidean) spring embedders: experimental evidence shows that this greatly helps to untangle the layout and to reach better local minima.

We enumerate bijectively the family of involutive Baxter permutations according to various parameters; in particular we obtain an elementary proof that the number of involutive Baxter permutations of size 2n with no fixed points is ${3\cdot2^{n-1}\ov

We introduce a general method to count unlabeled combinatorial structures and to efficiently generate them at random. The approach is based on pointing unlabeled structures in an “unbiased” way so that a structure of size n gives rise to n pointed structures. We extend Pólya theory to the corresponding pointing operator and present a random sampling framework based on both the principles of Boltzmann sampling and Pólya operators. All previously known unlabeled construction principles for Boltzmann samplers are special cases of our new results. Our method is illustrated in several examples: in each case, we provide enumerative results and efficient random samplers. The approach applies to unlabeled families of plane and nonplane unrooted trees, and tree-like structures in general, but also to families of graphs (such as cacti graphs and outerplanar graphs) and families of planar maps.

We present a unified general method for the asymptotic study of graphs from the so-called subcritical graph classes, which include the classes of cacti graphs, outerplanar graphs, and series-parallel graphs. This general method works in both the labelled and unlabelled framework. The main results concern the asymptotic enumeration and the limit laws of properties of random graphs chosen from subcritical classes. We show that the number $g_n/n!$ (resp., $g_n$) of labelled (resp., unlabelled) graphs on n vertices from a subcritical graph class ${\mathcal{G}}=\cup_n {\mathcal{G}_n}$ satisfies asymptotically the universal behavior $g_n = c \!n^{-5/2} \!\gamma^n \! (1+o(1))$ for computable constants $c,\gamma$, e.g., $\gamma\approx 9.38527$ for unlabelled series-parallel graphs, and that the number of vertices of degree k (k fixed) in a graph chosen uniformly at random from $\mathcal{G}_n$ converges (after rescaling) to a normal law as $n\to\infty$.

Schnyder woods are a well known combinatorial structure for planar graphs, which yields a decomposition into 3 vertexspanning trees. Our goal is to extend definitions and algorithms for Schnyder woods designed for planar graphs (corresponding to combinatorial surfaces with the topology of the sphere, i.e., of genus 0) to the more general case of graphs embedded on surfaces of arbitrary genus. First, we define a new traversal order of the vertices of a triangulated surface of genus g together with an orientation and coloration of the edges that extends the one proposed by Schnyder for the planar case. As a by-product we show how some recent schemes for compression and compact encoding of graphs can be extended to higher genus. All the algorithms presented here have linear time complexity.

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. It also provides an encoding for the set P ( n ) of n -edge 3-connected planar graphs that matches the entropy bound 1/ n log 2 | P ( n )| = 2 + o (1) bits per edge (bpe). This solves a theoretical problem recently raised in mesh compression as these graphs abstract the combinatorial part of meshes with spherical topology. We also achieve the optimal parametric rate 1/ n log 2 | P ( n , i , j )| bpe for graphs of P ( n ) with i vertices and j faces, matching in particular the optimal rate for triangulations. Our encoding relies on a linear time algorithm to compute an orientation associated with the minimal Schnyder wood of a 3-connected planar map. This algorithm is of independent interest, and it is, for instance, a key ingredient in a recent straight line drawing algorithm for 3-connected planar graphs.