Grothendieck's Dessins d'Enfants in a Web of Dualities. III

Abstract

We identify the dessin partition function with the partition function of the Laguerre unitary ensemble (LUE). Combined with the result due to Cunden et al on the relationship between the LUE correlators and strictly monotone Hurwitz numbers introduced by Goulden et al, we then establish connection of dessin counting to strictly monotone Hurwitz numbers. We also introduce a correction factor for the dessin/LUE partition function, which plays an important role in showing that the corrected dessin/LUE partition function is a tau-function of the Toda lattice hierarchy. As an application, we use the approach of Dubrovin and Zhang for the computation of the dessin correlators. In physicists' terminology, we establish dualities among dessin counting, generalized Penner model, and $\mathbb{P}^1$-topological sigma model.