Scaling Limits of Random Planar Maps with a Unique Large Face

We study random bipartite planar maps defined by assigning non-negative weights to each face of a map. We proof that for certain choices of weights a unique large face, having degree proportional to the total number of edges in the maps, appears when the maps are large. It is furthermore shown that as the number of edges n of the planar maps goes to infinity, the profile of distances to a marked vertex rescaled by n −1/2 is described by a Brownian excursion. The planar maps, with the graph metric rescaled by n, are then shown to converge in distribution towards Aldous’ Brownian tree in the Gromov–Hausdorff topology. In the proofs we rely on the Bouttier–di Francesco–Guitter bijection between maps and labeled trees and recent results on simply generated trees where a unique vertex of a high degree appears when the trees are large.