The Brownian cactus. I: Scaling limits of discrete cactuses (Q1951501)

The authors associate with every pointed graph a discrete tree called the cactus of the graph. Assuming that the pointed graph is chosen at random in a certain class of planar maps with a given number of vertices, and letting this number tend to infinity, they show that modulo a suitable rescaling, the associated cactus converges to a universal object, which they call Brownian cactus. Moreover, the Brownian cactus can be interpreted as the continuous cactus of the so-called Brownian map.