The enumeration of planar graphs via Wick's theorem

Abstract

A seminal technique of theoretical physics called Wick's theorem interprets the Gaussian matrix integral of the products of the trace of powers of Hermitian matrices as the number of labelled maps with a given degree sequence, sorted by their Euler characteristics. This leads to the map enumeration results analogous to those obtained by combinatorial methods. In this paper we show that the enumeration of the graphs embeddable on a given 2-dimensional surface (a main research topic of contemporary enumerative combinatorics) can also be formulated as the Gaussian matrix integral of an ice-type partition function. Some of the most puzzling conjectures of discrete mathematics are related to the notion of the cycle double cover. We express the number of the graphs with a fixed directed cycle double cover as the Gaussian matrix integral of an Ihara-Selberg-type function.