Irreducibility of Hurwitz spaces of coverings with one special fiber (Q2500590)

Let \(B\) denote a smooth projective curve of genus \(g\geq1\), over the field of complex numbers. Consider the Hurwitz space \({\mathcal H}_{d,m,{\underline{e}}}\) that parametrizes equivalence classes of degree \(d\) connected coverings of \(B\) with simple ramification at \(m\) points and ramification of cycle type \(\underline{e}\) at the only remaining branch point. Here \(d,m\) are integers satisfying \(d\geq3\), \(m\geq 0\) and \(\underline{e}=(e_1,\dots,e_r)\) is a partition of \(d\). In the paper under review, the subset of \({\mathcal H}_{d,m,{\underline{e}}}\) of coverings with the entire symmetric group \(S_d\) as monodromy group is proved to be irreducible under the condition \(m+\sum(e_i-1)\geq 2d\). This generalizes the result of \textit{T. Graber, J. Harris} and \textit{J. Starr} [A note on Hurwitz schemes of covers of a positive genus curve, preprint \texttt{math.AG/0205056}] for the case of simple ramification.