A note on Penner's cocycle on the fatgraph complex (Q2131799)

The fatgraph (or ribbon graph) complex of a punctured oriented surface was introduced by Penner in his book [\textit{R. C. Penner}, Decorated Teichmüller theory. Zürich: European Mathematical Society (EMS) (2012; Zbl 1243.30003)]. This is a complex whose cells are indexed by isotopy classes of graphs called fatgraph spines; these are graphs embedded in the surface satisfying certain conditions. The face relations of the fatgraph complex are described by contracting non-loop edges in fatgraph spines. The fatgraph complex provides a combinatorial model for the Teichmüller space of the surface equipped with the action of the mapping class group. The complex has been useful for the study of the cohomology of the mapping class group (work of Morita and Penner) and for that of other cohomological or topological objects related to the mapping class group. In the paper under review, the authors study invariants of trivalent fatgraph spines obtained by summation over trivalent vertices. They give an explicit cobounding cochain for a 1-cocycle on this complex. The cocycle was introduced by Penner in the above mentioned book. The formula for the cobounding cochain involves a summation over trivalent vertices of a trivalent fatgraph spine. As a by-product, the authors find a formula for the symplectic form of the surface underlying a given fatgraph spine. The subject is interesting and the paper is interesting and well written.