Counting the regular coverings of surfaces using the center of a group algebra (Q819009)

A classical problem is to obtain the number of different equivalent classes of branched coverings between closed Riemann surfaces. In this paper the authors consider regular branched coverings with a fixed algebraic type for the covering group. The counting is given by the knowledge of the center of the algebra of the group in question. The authors claim that the formula they obtain is very efficient when the structure of the center of the group algebra is known and the conjugacy classes can be computed.