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

Branched covers of the complex projective line ramified over $0,1$ and $\infty$ (Grothendieck's {\em dessins d'enfant}) of fixed genus and degree are effectively enumerated. More precisely, branched covers of a given ramification profile over $\infty$ and given numbers of preimages of $0$ and $1$ are considered. The generating function for the numbers of such covers is shown to satisfy a PDE that determines it uniquely modulo a simple initial condition. Moreover, this generat...

We survey some algebraic geometric aspects of mirror symmetry and duality in string theory. Some applications of computer algebra to algebraic geometry and string theory are shortly reviewed.

A part of Grothendieck's program for studying the Galois group $G_{\mathbb Q}$ of the field of all algebraic numbers $\overline{\mathbb Q}$ emerged from his insight that one should lift its action upon $\overline{\mathbb Q}$ to the action of $G_{\mathbb Q}$ upon the (appropriately defined) profinite completion of $\pi_1({\mathbb P}^1 \setminus \{0,1, \infty\})$. The latter admits a good combinatorial encoding via finite graphs "dessins d'enfant". This part was actively develo...

We consider N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories perturbed by tree level superpotential terms near isolated singular points in the Coulomb moduli space. We identify the Seiberg-Witten curve at these points with polynomial equations used to construct what Grothendieck called "dessins d'enfants" or "children's drawings" on the Riemann sphere. From a mathematical point of view, the dessins are important because the absolute Galois group Gal(\bar{Q}/Q) acts faithfully on them. We ar...

We obtain an explicit formula for the number of Lam\'e equations (modulo scalar equivalence) with index $n$ and projective monodromy group of order $2N$, for given $n \in \Z$ and $N \in \N$. This is done by performing the combinatorics of the `dessins d'enfants' associated to the Belyi covers which transform hypergeometric equations into Lam\'e equations by pull-back.

This article accompanies my June 1998 seminaire Bourbaki talk on Givental's work. After a quick review of descendent integrals in Gromov-Witten theory, I discuss Givental's formalism relating hypergeometric series to solutions of quantum differential equations arising from hypersurfaces in projective space. A particular case of this relationship is a proof of the Mirror prediction for the numbers of rational curves on the Calabi-Yau quintic 3-fold. The approach taken here is ...

As Jordan observed in 1870, just as univariate polynomials have Galois groups, so do problems in enumerative geometry. Despite this pedigree, the study of Galois groups in enumerative geometry was dormant for a century, with a systematic study only occuring in the past 15 years. We discuss the current directions of this study, including open problems and conjectures.

We outline a project to study the Galois action on a class of modular graphs (special type of dessins) which arise as the dual graphs of the sphere triangulations of non-negative curvature, classified by Thurston. Because of their connections to hypergeometric functions, there is a hope that these graphs will render themselves to explicit calculation for a study of Galois action on them, unlike the case of a general dessin.

Talk at the International Conference ``G\'eom\'etrie au vingti\`eme ci\`ecle: 1930--2000'', Paris, Institut Henri Poincar\'e, Sept. 2001. The title is a homage to Hans Rademacher and Otto Toeplitz whose book fascinated the author many years ago.

This paper is primarily intended as an introduction for the mathematically inclined to some of the rich algebraic combinatorics arising in for instance CFT. It is essentially self-contained, apart from some of the background motivation and examples which are included to give the reader a sense of the context. The theory is still a work-in-progress, and emphasis is given here to several open questions and problems.