Combinatorial characterization of sub-hyperbolic rational maps (Q1028354)

Quoting the paper's abstract: ``In 1980's, Thurston established a combinatorial characterization for post-critically finite rational maps among post-critically finite branched coverings of the two sphere to itself. A completed proof was written by Douady and Hubbard in their paper [\textit{A. Douady} and \textit{J. H. Hubbard}, Acta Math. 171, No.~2, 263--297 (1993; Zbl 0806.30027)]. This criterion was then extended by Cui, Jiang, and Sullivan to sub-hyperbolic rational maps among sub-hyperbolic semi-rational branched coverings of the two sphere to itself. The goal of this paper is to present a new but simpler proof for the combinatorial characterization of sub-hyperbolic rational maps by adapting some arguments in the proof in Douady and Hubbard's paper.'' The main work in the paper is to establish that a sub-hyperbolic semi-rational branched covering \(f\) that has no Thurston obstructions is combinatorially and locally holomorphically equivalent to a rational map \(R\). (The converse is also true, and there is a certain uniqueness result about \(R\).) The argument is based on finding a unique fixed point of an operator \(\sigma_f\) on a Teichmüller space \(T_f\) associated with \(f\). It is shown that the lack of Thurston obstructions implies a type of bounded geometry, which in turn implies the required fixed point property.