$Z$-oriented triangulations of surfaces (2001.02626v3)

Abstract: The main objects of the paper are $z$-oriented triangulations of connected closed $2$-dimensional surfaces. A $z$-orientation of a map is a minimal collection of zigzags which double covers the set of edges. We have two possibilities for an edge -- zigzags from the $z$-orientation pass through this edge in different directions (type I) or in the same direction (type II). Then there are two types of faces in a triangulation: the first type is when two edges of the face are of type I and one edge is of type II and the second type is when all edges of the face are of type II. We investigate $z$-oriented triangulations with all faces of the first type (in the general case, any $z$-oriented triangulation can be shredded to a $z$-oriented triangulation of such type). A zigzag is homogeneous if it contains precisely two edges of type I after any edge of type II. We give a topological characterization of the homogeneity of zigzags; in particular, we describe a one-to-one correspondence between $z$-oriented triangulations with homogeneous zigzags and closed $2$-cell embeddings of directed Eulerian graphs in surfaces. At the end, we give an application to one type of the $z$-monodromy.