Orbits of Hurwitz action for coverings of a sphere with two special fibers (Q675794)

The paper is concerned with the classification of (connected) branched coverings of the 2-sphere, where two such coverings, \(f_1: X_1\to S^2\) and \(f_2: X_2\to S^2\), are considered equivalent if there exist homeomorphisms \(g: S^2\to S^2\) and \(h: X_1\to X_2\) such that \(g f_1=f_2 h\). In 1891, A. Hurwitz studied the case when all branch points are simple, i.e., have fibers of cardinality \(d-1\) where \(d\) is the degree (number of sheets) of the covering. He proved that two such coverings are equivalent if and only if they have the same degree and the same number of branch points. \textit{P. Kluitmann} [Contemp. Math. 78, 299-325 (1988; Zbl 0701.20019)] extended the classification to coverings with exactly one special, i.e. not simple, branch point. He proved that the two Hurwitz invariants together with a further obvious invariant, the branching data (i.e. the list of multiplicities of the points in the fiber) of the special branch point, are sufficient to distinguish among such coverings. The case of two special branch points was first considered by \textit{E. Looijenga} [Invent. Math. 121, No. 2, 411-419 (1995; Zbl 0851.14017)] under the restriction that both special branch points have singleton fibers. In the present paper the author uses Looijenga's method to obtain a complete classification of coverings with exactly two special branch points. He proves that two such coverings are equivalent if and only if they have the same degree, number of branch points (or genus), branching data for the two special branch points, and monodromy group. He shows that these invariants are not sufficient to distinguish among coverings with three special branch points.