Counting real Galois covers of the projective line (Q816336)

There is a \((1-1)\) correspondence between Galois covers \(f:X\mapsto\mathbb{P}^1_C\) of the projective line with Galois group \(G\) and branch points \(t_1,\dots,t_r\in \mathbb{P}^1_\mathbb{C}\) and \(r\)-tuples \((g_1, \dots,g_r)\in G\) of generators of \(G\) satisfying the relation \(g_1,\dots, g_r=1\). For an \(r\)-tuple \(\mathbb{C}=C_1,\dots, \mathbb{C}_r)\) of conjugacy classes of \(G\), we say \(f\) is of type \(\mathbb{C}\) if the \(r\)-tuple \((g_1,\dots, g_r)\) has the extra property that there is a permutation \(\sigma\) such that \(g_i\in\mathbb{C}_{\sigma(i)}\) for \(i=1,\dots,r\). The paper deals with the problem of counting those \(G\)-covers with fixed branch locus for which the real number field \(\mathbb{R}\) is a field of definition. The paper also considers the question of how many \(G\)-covers have their field of moduli contained in \(\mathbb{R}\). Among the applications could be mentioned that new families are constructed of covers not defined over their field of moduli having arbitrarily large monodromy group. Further applications concern regular extensions of \(\mathbb{Q}^{tr}(x)\) where \(\mathbb{Q}^{tr}\) is the field of totally real algebraic numbers. For instance, it is shown that the projective limit (for \(n\to\infty)\) of the dihedral groups \(D_{2a^n}\) where \(a\) is a fixed odd number \(>1\), admits a regular realization over \(\mathbb{Q}^{tr}\), even satisfying certain conditions for the branch points.