Generating irreducible triangulations of surfaces

Starting with the irreducible triangulations of a fixed surface and splitting vertices, all the triangulations of the surface up to a given number of vertices can be generated. The irreducible triangulations have previously been determined for the surfaces S_0, S_1, N_1,and N_2. An algorithm is presented for generating the irreducible triangulations of a fixed surface using triangulations of other surfaces. This algorithm has been implemented as a computer program which terminates for S_1, S_2, N_1, N_2, N_3, and N_4. Thus the complete sets irreducible triangulations are now also known for S_2, N_3, and N_4, with respective cardinalities 396784, 9708, and 6297982.