Embeddings of infinite graphs (Q1074594)

Embeddings of infinite graphs in surfaces (not necessarily compact) without boundary are considered. Cellular embeddings are studied in details. Each rotation system of a locally finite graph G gives rise to a cellular embedding of G into some surface, and every cellular embedding with all 2-cells of finite size can be obtained in this way. The graphs which admit cellular embeddings with all cells finite are characterized. It is shown that there is a surjective continuous mapping \(\psi\) : \(\beta\) (G)\(\to \beta (S)\) mapping the ends \(\beta\) (G) of a graph G onto the space of ends \(\beta\) (S) of the surface S into which G is cellularly embedded. If this embedding has only faces of finite size then \(\psi\) is a homeomorphism. Finally the genus of infinite graphs is considered. It is shown that the minimum genus of surfaces into which G has embedding is equal to the supremum of genera of finite subgraphs of G. To determine the genus, it suffices to consider cellular embeddings, but restriction to embeddings with finite faces does not always give genus embeddings.