Top degree part in \(b\)-conjecture for unicellular bipartite maps (Q2401405)

Summary: \textit{I. P. Goulden} and \textit{D. M. Jackson} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 348, No. 3, 873--892 (1996; Zbl 0858.05097)] introduced, using Jack symmetric functions, some multivariate generating series \(\psi(\boldsymbol{x}, \boldsymbol{y},\boldsymbol{z}; 1, 1+\beta)\) with an additional parameter \(\beta\) that might be interpreted as a continuous deformation of the rooted bipartite maps generating series. Indeed, it has a property that for \(\beta \in \{0,1\}\), it specializes to the rooted, orientable (general, i.e. orientable or not, respectively) bipartite maps generating series. They made the following conjecture: coefficients of \(\psi\) are polynomials in \(\beta\) with positive integer coefficients that can be written as a multivariate generating series of rooted, general bipartite maps, where the exponent of \(\beta\) is an integer-valued statistics that in some sense ``measures the non-orientability'' of the corresponding bipartite map.{ }We show that except two special values of \(\beta = 0,1\) for which the combinatorial interpretation of the coefficients of \(\psi\) is known, there exists a third special value \(\beta = -1\) for which the coefficients of \(\psi\) indexed by two partitions \(\mu,\nu\), and one partition with only one part are given by rooted, orientable bipartite maps with arbitrary face degrees and black/white vertex degrees given by \(\mu\)/\(\nu\), respectively. We show that this evaluation corresponds, up to a sign, to a top-degree part of the coefficients of \(\psi\). As a consequence, we introduce a collection of integer-valued statistics of maps \((\eta)\) such that the top-degree of the multivariate generating series of rooted, bipartite maps with only one face (called \textit{unicellular}) with respect to \(\eta\) gives the top degree of the appropriate coefficients of \(\psi\). Finally, we show that \(b\) conjecture holds true for all rooted, unicellular bipartite maps of genus at most \(2\).