Degree of W-operator and Noncrossing Partition

Abstract

Goulden and Jackson first introduced the cut-and-join operator. The cut-and-join is widely used in studying the Hurwitz number and many other topological recursion problems. Mironov, Morosov and Natanzon give a more general construction and call it W-operator W([n]). As a special case, the cut-and-join operator is W([2]). In this paper, we study the structure of W([n]). We prove that W([n]) can be written as the sum of n! terms and each term corresponds uniquely to a permutation in Sn. We also define the degree of each term. We prove that there is a correspondence between the terms of W([n]) with highest degree and the noncrossing partitions.