Classification of regular embeddings of n-dimensional cubes

Abstract

An orientably-regular map is a 2-cell embedding of a connected graph or multigraph into an orientable surface, such that the group of all orientation-preserving automorphisms of the embedding has a single orbit on the set of all arcs (incident vertex-edge pairs). Such embeddings of the n-dimensional cubes Q n were classified for all odd n by Du, Kwak and Nedela in 2005, and in 2007, Jing Xu proved that for n=2m where m is odd, they are precisely the embeddings constructed by Kwon in 2004. Here, we give a classification of orientably-regular embeddings of Q n for all n. In particular, we show that for all even n (=2m), these embeddings are in one-to-one correspondence with elements σ of order 1 or 2 in the symmetric group S n such that σ fixes n, preserves the set of all pairs B i ={i,i+m} for 1≤ i≤ m, and induces the same permutation on this set as the permutation B i → B f(i) for some additive bijection f:ℤm →ℤm . We also give formulae for the numbers of embeddings that are reflexible and chiral, respectively, showing that the ratio of reflexible to chiral embeddings tends to zero for large even n. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.