Degenerating families of branched coverings of discs and fundamental groups of 3-dimensional manifolds (Q1411281)

According to a well-known theorem of Hilden and Montesinos every compact orientable 3-manifold can be expressed as a 3-fold covering of a 3-sphere branched over a knot whose monodromy at each branch point is a transposition. Thus, any such compact orientable 3-manifold can be constructed from the pair \((\Phi ,\sigma)\), where \(\Phi\) is a representation of the free group \(F_n\) onto the symmetric group \(S_3\) and \(\sigma\) is a braid with \(n\) strings such that \(\Phi \circ \sigma = \Phi\). The braid \(\sigma\) forms a subgroup of the braid group \(M_n\) of finite index. This group is called the isotropy group \(I(\Phi)\). The authors compute the generators of \(I(\Phi)\) for the case when the branched covering is a Riemann surface with one deleted disc. Other cases were considered by \textit{J. Birman} and \textit{B. Wajnryb} [Isr. J. Math. 88, 425-427 (1994; Zbl 0811.57019)].