On \(4\)-fold covering moves (Q1860334)

It is well known that every closed orientable 3-manifold is a simple branched covering of the 3-sphere and that the degree of the covering can be chosen to be greater than or equal to 3. Such a covering can be completely represented by a colored link, that is, a link decorated with transpositions of some symmetric group. Of course, the same 3-manifold admits many different representations by means of colored links. The author proves the existence of a finite set of elementary moves sufficient to connect any two representations of the same 3-manifold by colored links. Here he studies the case of simple branched coverings of the 3-sphere which have degree 4. These results and their proofs are modeled on similar results for branched coverings of degree 3 proved in [\textit{R. Piergallini}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. No. 2, 903-920 (1991; Zbl 0734.57002)]. It is conjectured that the results hold for branched coverings of the 3-sphere which have degree greater than 4. If so, this should give a combinatorial description of closed orientable 3-manifolds which is comparable to that obtained by Rolsen-Kirby calculus on links with rational coefficients in the standard 3-sphere.