Gluing of Surfaces with Polygonal Boundaries

Abstract

By pairwise gluing of edges of a polygon, one produces two-dimensional surfaces with handles and boundaries. In this paper, we count the number ${\cal N}_{g,L}(n_1, n_2, ..., n_L)$ of different ways to produce a surface of given genus $g$ with $L$ polygonal boundaries with given numbers of edges $n_1, n_2, >..., n_L$. Using combinatorial relations between graphs on real two-dimensional surfaces, we derive recursive relations between ${\cal N}_{g,L}$. We show that Harer-Zagier numbers appear as a particular case of ${\cal N}_{g,L}$ and derive a new explicit expression for them.