The diameter of random Belyi surfaces

Abstract

We determine the asymptotic growth rate of the diameter of the random hyperbolic surfaces constructed by Brooks and Makover. This model consists of a uniform gluing of $2n$ hyperbolic ideal triangles along their sides followed by a compactification to get a random hyperbolic surface of genus roughly $n/2$. We show that the diameter of those random surfaces is asymptotic to $2 \log n$ in probability as $n \to \infty$.