Equivelar maps on the torus (Q2519777)

In this paper, the authors classify all the equivelar polyhedral maps on the torus; by equivelar is meant that there are fixed \(p\) and \(q\) such that the faces are \(p\)-gons meeting \(q\) at each vertex, and polyhedra means that two \(p\)-gons meet in a common face of each (empty, vertex or edge). The types can only be \(\{p,q\} = \{3,6\},\;\{4,3\}\) or \(\{6,3\}\); it suffices to consider the first two, since the last is dual to the first. \textit{S. Negami} [Discrete Math. 44, 161--180 (1983; Zbl 0508.05033)] has shown that such maps are actually vertex-transitive, and must be obtainable as quotients of the planar tesselations \(\{3,6\}\) or \(\{4,4\}\) by sublattices of the lattices of their vertices. Among them are those that are chiral (with rotational symmetries only) or regular (with full symmetry); these quotients are denoted \(\{3,6\}_{p,q}\) or \(\{4,4\}_{p,q}\), where the sublattice is generated by \(p{\mathbf a} + q{\mathbf b}\), with \({\mathbf a} = (1,0)\) and \({\mathbf b} = \frac12(1,\sqrt 3)\) or \((0,1)\) (respectively), and their images by rotation through multiples of \(\pi/3\) or \(\pi/2\), as appropriate. These maps have \(p^2 + pq + q^2\) or \(p^2 + q^2\) vertices; the condition for regularity is \(pq(p - q) = 0\) in both cases. An initial problem is that two or more ways of representing the sublattice can yield the same map; the authors discuss how to obtain a unique standard form (this differs in the chiral or regular case from the general one). The classification involves the isotropy group (of symmetries which preserve a vertex), whose order can be \(2\) or \(4\) in the non-chiral case, \(6\) or \(12\) in case \(\{3,6\}\), or \(4\) or \(8\) in case \(\{4,4\}\) (there are two different possible isotropy groups of order \(4\) in the latter case). Of particular interest are the covering relationships. In case \(\{3,6\}\), if \(p^2 + pq + q^2 = k(r^2 + rs + s^2)\) for some integer \(k\), then there is a \(k\)-sheeted covering of either \(\{3,6\}_{r,s}\) or \(\{3,6\}_{s,r}\) by \(\{3,6\}_{p,q}\); the case \(\{4,4\}\) is exactly analogous. These relationships illustrate arithmetic properties of numbers of the form \(p^2 + pq + q^2\) or \(p^2 + q^2\). Moreover, the actual numbers of non-equivalent maps with \(n\) vertices involve functions such as \(\sigma(n)\) (the sum of the divisors of \(n\)) or \(d(n)\) (the number of its divisors), and so can be related to the Riemann \(\zeta\)-function and the Dirichlet \(L\)-function.