Cusps, congruence groups and monstrous dessins (Q2210534)

The Fischer-Griess monster group \(\mathbb{M}\) is the biggest sporadic finite simple group. It has 194 conjugacy classes, which give 172 distinct McKay-Thompson series \(T_{\bar{g}}(q)= q^{-1} \sum _{k=0}^{\infty} \mathrm{ch}_{W_k^{\natural}}(\bar{g})q^k\), where \( \mathrm{ch}_{W_k^{\natural}}(\bar{g})q^k\) denotes the character of the representation \(W_k^{\natural}\) of \(\mathbb{M}\) evaluated on the conjugacy class \(\bar{g}\). Each of those 172 conjugacy classes corresponds to a group \(G_{\bar{g}}\) which lies between the Hecke group \(\Gamma_0(N)\) of level \(N\), and its normalizer \(\Gamma_0(N)^+\) in \(\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{R})\). Fifteen of those classes correspond to Hecke groups. Each group \(G_{\bar{g}}\) is a subgroup of \(\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{R})\) and thus it defines the complex surface \(\mathbb{H}/G_{\bar{g}}\) where \(\mathbb{H}\) is the upper half-plane. That surface has genus 0, and has hyperbolic cusps, and maybe torsion points. The paper under review is interested in the cusps of the Hecke groups. In Section 1 a combinatorial description of the quotient set \( \Gamma_0(N)\backslash \mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{Z})\) is studied. This quotient is in a natural way the set \(P \mathcal{L}_1^N\) of projective lattices which are at hyperdistance \(N\) from a reference lattice \(L_1\). The set \(P \mathcal{L}_1^N\) is in turn in bijection with \(\mathbb{P}^1 (\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})\) and the authors study the bijection \(\Gamma_0(N) \backslash \mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{Z}) \approx \mathbb{P}^1 (\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})\). Section 2 is devoted to dessins d'enfants, introduced by Grothendieck. The properties of the special dessins associated with the Hecke groups \(\Gamma_0(N)\) are studied. From the dessins associated to \(\Gamma_0(N)\), the complex modular curves \(X_0(N)\) defined by \(\Gamma_0(N)\) are considered. This allows in Section 3 to express, for each of the 15 Hecke modular groups \(\Gamma_0(N)\) of genus 0, a fundamental domain in \(\mathbb{H}\), its corresponding dessin d'enfants, and a list of its cusps, by means of a one-by-one analysis. Finally, a useful Appendix describes arithmetic groups in terms of their action on lattices, which leads to the definition of the Hecke congruence subgroups.