On a canonical construction of tessellated surfaces from finite groups (Q2401561)

The present paper associates, in a functorial way, to any finite nonabelian group \(G\) a 2-dimensional simplicial complex \(X(G)\) which is a union of finitely many pseudosurfaces (with singularities due to self-point intersections), intersecting pairwise in finitely many points. Resolving the singularities, one obtains a complex \(Y(G)\) which is a disjoint union of finitely many closed, oriented, triangulated surfaces (2-manifolds) which form a natural set of invariants for the group (equivalent to the noncommutative part of the group's multiplication table). These surfaces have closed cell-structures coming from graph-embeddings into the surfaces defining a collection \(M(G)\) of closed-cell maps on the surfaces, and it is shown that these maps are regular or dual quasi-regular (i.e., the map automorphism group acts transitively on edges and faces, but with maybe two orbits of vertices). By functoriality, the automorphism group of \(G\) acts on \(Y(G)\) and \(M(G)\). ``We attempt to quantify the number and type of surface components that occur in the map decomposition \(M(G)\) for a given group \(G\). For example, when \(G\) is the alternating group on 7 letters, the construction results in 16813 surface components of 58 distinct genera, with even more distinct cell-structures. Tables summarizing the various maps that occur in \(M(G)\) for various groups \(G\) can be found at the end of the paper.'' ``We also show that extensions of groups result in branched coverings between the component surfaces. Finally we exploit functoriality to obtain interesting faithful actions of subquotients of these groups and their automorphism groups on these surfaces and maps.''