Hurwitz spaces and liftings to the Valentiner group (Q2401906)

This paper deals with Hurwitz schemes of branched covers of the projective line, with Galois group \(A_6\) branched on \(k\) points and monodromy given by the conjugacy class of two disjoint cycles. The authors prove that for \(k\) greater or equal to six, the absolute Hurwitz space has two components and only one component for \(k=5\). Their result goes in line with the asymptotic results of Kulikov and Bogomolov. They also consider the inner Hurwitz space i.e. the space of Galois closures, where they prove that there are three components for \(k\) greater or equal to six and two components for \(k=5\). On the technical side they use an interesting approach inspired by Frieds spin structures: a lifting to the Valentiner group serves as an invariant.