The big Picard theorem and other results on Riemann surfaces (Q2272254)

The Big Picard Theorem states that the image of a neighbourhood of an essential singularity covers the whole complex plane, except for perhaps one point. There are several proofs of this theorem, using different techniques. In this article, the authors give a new proof of the Big Picard Theorem based on some facts on the modular group and modular functions, the theory of covering spaces and the observation that there is no holomorphic mapping from the punctured disc to an annulus that is injective at the fundamental group level. The authors study properties of discrete groups of Möbius transformations using Lie group techniques. In particular, it is shown that a covering from the punctured disc to a Riemann surface, if restricted to a small enough punctured disc, is a finite covering.