Counting Line-Colored D-ary Trees

Abstract

Random tensor models are generalizations of matrix models which also support a 1/N expansion. The dominant observables are in correspondence with some trees, namely rooted trees with vertices of degree at most $D$ and lines colored by a number $i$ from 1 to $D$ such that no two lines connecting a vertex to its descendants have the same color. In this Letter we study by independent methods a generating function for these observables. We prove that the number of such trees with exactly $p_i$ lines of color $i$ is $\frac{1}{\sum_{i=1}^D p_i +1} \binom{\sum_{i=1}^D p_i+1}{p_1} ... \binom{\sum_{i=1}^D p_i+1}{p_D}$.