Explicit computation of some families of Hurwitz numbers. II (Q2663678)

This is the second part of the research started in [\textit{C. Petronio}, Eur. J. Comb. 75, 136--151 (2019; Zbl 1408.57002)]. Let \(\widetilde{\Sigma}\) and \(\Sigma\) be two compact connected orientable surfaces. We recall that two branched coverings \(f_1:\widetilde{\Sigma}\to\Sigma\) and \(f_2:\widetilde{\Sigma}\to\Sigma\) are said to be weakly equivalent if there exist homeomorphisms \(\widetilde{g}:\widetilde{\Sigma}\to\widetilde{\Sigma}\) and \(g:\Sigma\to\Sigma \) such that \(f_1 \circ \widetilde{g} = g \circ f_2\). For every branched cover \(f:\widetilde{\Sigma}\to\Sigma\), its branch data is the set of the form \([\widetilde{\Sigma},{\Sigma},d,n,\pi_1,\ldots,\pi_n]\). Here \(d\) is the degree of the covering, \(n\) is the number of branching points, \(\pi_j\) is the partition of \(d\) consisting of local degrees at the points in the pre-image of the \(j\)-th branching point. The main goal is to describe, for a given branch data, the number of its weakly inequivalent realizations; such numbers are called the weak Hurwitz numbers.\par In the previous paper, cited above, the author calculated weak Hurwitz numbers for the case where \(\Sigma\) is the sphere \(S\), \(\widetilde{\Sigma}\) is a surface of genus \(g\), \(0\le g\le 2\), \(d=2k\), \(n=3\), \(\pi_1=(2,\ldots,2)\), \(\pi_2=(2h+1,1,2,\ldots,2)\), \(\pi_3=(d_i)_{i=1}^\ell\) and \(h\) is a small number.\par In the present paper, similar calculations are given for the case where \(\pi_2\) has the form \((2h+1,3,2,\ldots,2)\) and \(h\) is sufficiently small, namely: \(h=0\), \(1\), \(2\) for \(g=0\); \(h=1\), \(2\) for \(g=1\); and \(h=3\) for \(g=2\). As it is noted in the paper, using the same techniques, we can obtain some results for larger values of \(h\), but the calculations become much more complicated with the growth of \(h\).