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

We give an account of the theory of dessins d'enfants which is both elementary and self-contained. We describe the equivalence of many categories (graphs embedded nicely on surfaces, finite sets with certain permutations, certain field extensions, and some classes of algebraic curves), some of which are naturally endowed with an action of the absolute Galois group of the rational field. We prove that the action is faithful. Eventually we prove that this absolute Galois group ...

We show that the spectral curve for Eynard-Orantin topological recursions satisfied by counting Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants are related to Narayana numbers. This suggests a connection of dessins to combinatorics of Coxeter groups, noncrossing partitions, free probability theory, and cluster algebras.

The connections amongst (1) quivers whose representation varieties are Calabi-Yau, (2) the combinatorics of bipartite graphs on Riemann surfaces, and (3) the geometry of mirror symmetry have engendered a rich subject at whose heart is the physics of gauge/string theories. We review the various parts of this intricate story in some depth, for a mathematical audience without assumption of any knowledge of physics, emphasizing a plethora of results residing at the intersection...

We study Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants in the context of the $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories in $\left(3+1\right)$ dimensions with product $SU\left(2\right)$ gauge groups which have recently been considered by Gaiotto et al. We identify the precise context in which dessins arise in these theories: they are the so-called ribbon graphs of such theories at certain isolated points in the Coulomb branch of the moduli space. With this point in mind, we highlight co...

We consider an application of Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants to the theory of the sixth Painlev\'e and Gauss hypergeometric functions: two classical special functions of the isomonodromy type. It is shown that, higher order transformations and the Schwarz table for the Gauss hypergeometric function are closely related with some particular Belyi functions. Moreover, we introduce a notion of deformation of the dessins d'enfants and show that one dimensional deformations are a...

The subjects in the title are interwoven in many different and very deep ways. I recently wrote several expository accounts [64-66] that reflect a certain range of developments, but even in their totality they cannot be taken as a comprehensive survey. In the format of a 30-page contribution aimed at a general mathematical audience, I have decided to illustrate some of the basic ideas in one very interesting example - that of HilbpC2, nq, hoping to spark the curiosity of coll...

Dessin d'enfants (French for children's drawings) serve as a unique standpoint of studying classical complex analysis under the lens of combinatorial constructs. A thorough development of the background of this theory is developed with an emphasis on the relationship of monodromy to Dessins, which serve as a pathway to the Riemann Hilbert problem. This paper investigates representations of Dessins by permutations, the connection of Dessins to a particular class of Riemann sur...

We give a review of modern approaches to constructing formal solutions to integrable hierarchies of mathematical physics, whose coefficients are answers to various enumerative problems. The relationship between these approaches and combinatorics of symmetric groups and their representations is explained. Applications of the results to constructing efficient computations in problems related to models of quantum field theories are given.

A survey written for the upcoming "Handbook of Enumerative Combinatorics".

We generalize a formula due to Macdonald that relates the singular Betti numbers of $X^{n}/G$ to those of $X$, where $X$ is a compact manifold and $G$ is any subgroup of the symmetric group $S_{n}$ acting on $X^{n}$ by permuting coordinates. Our result is completely axiomatic: in a general setting, given an endomorphism on the cohomology $H^{\bullet}(X)$, it explains how we can explicitly relate the Lefschetz series of the induced endomorphism on $H^{\bullet}(X^{n})^{G}$ to t...