Harbater-Mumford subvarieties of moduli spaces of covers (Q2571044)

The author studies several variants of condition for constructing covers of \(\mathbb P^1\) with prescribed monodromy data and controlled fields of definition. Harbater-Mumford subvarieties are defined to be Hurwitz moduli spaces of covers of Harbater-Mumford type where most of the branch points are fixed on \(\mathbb P^1\). Extending the criterion of M.Fried for HM-g-complete tuples of conjugacy classes, the author gives a group theoretical condition that ensures geometric irreducibility of certain Harbater-Mumford subvarieties. Existence of rational points on (a certain tower of) these varieties are examined over large fields such as the maximal algebraic extensions of \(\mathbb Q\) with some fixed places totally split. Part of the proof relies on technical combination of the patching method together with the local-global principle of \textit{P. Debes, J.-C. Douai} and \textit{L. Moret-Bailly} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 574, 51--78 (2004; Zbl 1077.14019)]. As an application, the author constructs, for example, Galois covers of \(\mathbb P^1\) having pro-dihedral groups as Galois groups that are regular over suitable large fields of the above type.