Graphs on Surfaces : Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots

Graphs on Surfaces: Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots offers an accessible and comprehensive treatment of recent developments on generalized duals of graphs on surfaces, and their applications. The authors  illustrate the interdependency between duality, medial graphs and knots; how this interdependency is reflected in algebraic invariants of graphs and knots; and how it can be exploited to solve problems in graph and knot theory. Taking  a constructive approach, the authors emphasize how generalized duals and related ideas arise by localizing classical constructions, such as geometric duals and Tait graphs, and then removing artificial restrictions in these constructions to obtain full extensions of them to embedded graphs. The authors demonstrate the benefits of these generalizations to embedded graphs in chapters describing their applications to graph polynomials and knots.  

 Graphs on Surfaces: Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots  also provides a self-contained introduction to graphs on surfaces, generalized duals, topological graph polynomials, and knot polynomials that is accessible both to graph theorists and to knot theorists.  Directed at those with some familiarity with basic graph theory and knot theory, this book is appropriate for graduate students and researchers in either area. Because the area is advancing so rapidly, the authors give a comprehensive overview of the topic and include a robust bibliography, aiming to provide the reader with the necessary foundations to stay abreast of the field. The reader will come away from the text convinced of advantages of considering these higher genus analogues of constructions of plane and abstract graphs, and with a good understanding of how they arise.

From the reviews:

“Here, the venerable knot-theoretic and graph-theoretic themes find a host of unifying common generalizations. Undergraduates will appreciate the patient and visual development of the foundations, particularly the dualities (paired representations of a single structure). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.” (D. V. Feldman, Choice, Vol. 51 (7), March, 2014)

“This monograph is aimed at researchers both in graph theory and in knot theory. It should be accessible to a graduate student with a grounding in both subjects. There are (colour) diagrams throughout. ... The monograph gives a unified treatment of various ideas that have been studied and used previously, generalising many of them in the process.” (Jessica Banks, zbMATH, Vol. 1283, 2014)

“The authors have composed a very interesting and valuable work. ... For properly prepared readers ... the book under review is the occasion for all sorts of fun including the inner life of ribbon groups, Tait graphs, Penrose polynomials, Tutte polynomials, and of course Jones polynomials and HOMFLY polynomials. This is fascinating mathematics, presented in a clear and accessible way.” (Michael Berg, MAA Reviews, October, 2013)