Indecomposable permutations, hypermaps and labeled Dyck paths

Hypermaps were introduced as an algebraic tool for the representation of embeddings of graphs on an orientable surface. Recently a bijection was given between hypermaps and indecomposable permutations; this sheds new light on the subject by connecting a hypermap to a simpler object. In this paper, a bijection between indecomposable permutations and labeled Dyck paths is proposed, from which a few enumerative results concerning hypermaps and maps follow. We obtain for instance an inductive formula for the number of hypermaps with n darts, p vertices and q hyperedges; the latter is also the number of indecomposable permutations of S n with p cycles and q left-to-right maxima. The distribution of these parameters among all permutations is also considered.