Graphs on surfaces and Khovanov homology (Q2464805)

A ribbon graph is a multi-graph that is embedded in a surface such that its complement is a union of 2-cells. In this paper, the authors show that for any link \(L\) there is a one-to-one correspondance between spanning trees of the Tait graph associated to \(L\) and spanning ribbon subgraphs with one face. The latter is then used to express Khovanov homology results in terms of ribbon graphs and ordered chord diagrams.