Equations determining Belyi pairs, with applications to anti-Vandermonde systems (Q2519214)

This paper addresses the following general problem in Grothendieck's theory of dessins d'enfants: determine all Belyi pairs whose associated dessins d'enfants have a given combinatorial type. Starting with the combinatorial type Val of a dessins of genus \(g\) and degree \(n\), the author describes general systems of equations in the moduli space \(\mathcal{M}_g(\mathbb{C})\) and the Hurwitz space \(\mathcal{H}_{g,n}(\mathbb{C})\), whose zero loci contain the Belyi pairs with dessins of combinatorial type Val. In the cases of genus 0 and 1, the equations are written out explicitly. Due to the difficulty of solving these equations, the author proceeds to study the existence of \textit{parasitic} solutions: solutions to these equations that either do not correspond to Belyi pairs (non-geometric parasitic solutions) or else correspond to Belyi pairs with dessins of combinatorial type different from Val (geometric parasitic solutions). In Theorems 3.1 and 3.2, the author proves that in the genus 0 case, parasitic solutions arise only when a zero of the Belyi function coalesces with a pole. Theorem 4.1 asserts the finiteness of the set of geometric parasitic solutions (up to linear fractional transformations), while Theorem 4.4 gives an example of a combinatorial type with infinitely many non-geometric parasitic solutions. Section 5 is devoted to displaying an infinite sequence of genus zero dessins, each of which possesses a geometric parasitic solution. Finally, in Section 6 it is shown that spherical dessins with a single face (i.e. genus zero dessins whose graphs are trees) possess no parasitic solutions. The system of equations for such a combinatorial type is equivalent to an anti-Vandermonde system, and the paper concludes with an application of the foregoing results to the solution sets of such systems (Theorem 6.6).