The Hurwitz space is a compactification of the space of rational functions of a given degree. The Lyashko-Looijenga map assigns to a rational function the set of its critical values. It is known that the number of ramified coverings of CP^1 by CP^1 with prescribed ramification points and ramification types is related to the degree of the Lyashko--Looijenga map on various strata of the Hurwitz space. Here we explain how the degree of the Lyashko-Looijenga map is related to the intersection theory on this space. We describe the cohomology algebra of the Hurwitz space and prove several relations between the homology classes represented by various strata.
The Hurwitz space is a compactification of the space of rational functions of a given degree. We study the intersection of various strata of this space with its boundary. A study of the cohomology ring of the Hurwitz space then allows us to obtain recurrence relations for certain numbers of ramified coverings of a sphere by a sphere with prescribed ramifications. Generating functions for these numbers belong to a very particular subalgebra of the algebra of power series.
We derive a closed-form expression for all genus 1 Hurwitz numbers, and give a simple new graph-theoretic interpretation of Hurwitz numbers in genus 0 and 1. (Hurwitz numbers essentially count irreducible genus g covers of the sphere, with arbitrary specified branching over one point, simple branching over other specified points, and no other branching. The problem is equivalent to counting transitive factorisations of permutations into transpositions.) These results prove a conjecture of Goulden and Jackson, and extend results of Hurwitz and many others.
In this paper we find an explicit formula for the number of topologically different ramified coverings $C\to\CP^1$ (C is a compact Riemann surface of genus g) with only one complicated branching point in terms of Hodge integrals over the moduli space of genus g curves with marked points.
This article is an extended version of preprint math.AG/9902104. We find an explicit formula for the number of topologically different ramified coverings of a sphere by a genus g surface with only one complicated branching point in terms of Hodge integrals over the moduli space of genus g curves with marked points.
Hurwitz numbers are a weighted count of degree d ramified covers of curves with specified ramification profiles at marked points on the codomain curve. Isomorphism classes of these covers can be included as a dense open set in a moduli space, called a Hurwitz space. The Hurwitz space has a forgetful morphism to the moduli space of marked, stable curves, and the degree of this morphism encodes the Hurwitz numbers. Mikhalkin has constructed a moduli space of tropical marked, stable curves, and this space is a tropical variety. In this paper, I construct a tropical analogue of the Hurwitz space i…
We study the components of the Hurwitz scheme of ramified coverings of $\mathbb{P}^1$ with monodromy given by the alternating group $A_6$ and elements in the conjugacy class of product of two disjoint cycles. In order to detect the connected components of the Hurwitz scheme, inspired by the case of the spin structures studied by Fried for the $3$-cycles, we use as invariant the lifting to the Valentiner group, triple covering of $A_6$. We prove that the Hurwitz scheme has two irreducible components when the genus of the covering is greater than zero, in accordance with the asymptotic solution …
We consider ramified coverings of P^1 with arbitrary ramification type over 0 and infinity and simple ramifications elsewhere and prove that the generating function for the numbers of such coverings is a tau-function for the Toda lattice hierarchy of Ueno and Takasaki.
An almost Belyi covering is an algebraic covering of the projective line, such that all ramified points except one simple ramified point lie above a set of 3 points of the projective line. In general, there are 1-dimensional families of these coverings with a fixed ramification pattern. (That is, Hurwitz spaces for these coverings are curves.) In this paper, three almost Belyi coverings of degrees 11, 12, and 20 are explicitly constructed. We demonstrate how these coverings can be used for computation of several algebraic solutions of the sixth Painleve equation.
We study "pure-cycle" Hurwitz spaces, parametrizing covers of the projective line having only one ramified point over each branch point. We start with the case of genus-0 covers, using a combination of limit linear series theory and group theory to show that these spaces are always irreducible. In the case of four branch points, we also compute the associated Hurwitz numbers. Finally, we give a conditional result in the higher-genus case, requiring at least 3g simply branched points. These results have equivalent formulations in group theory, and in this setting complement results of Conway-Fr…
Ekedahl, Lando, Shapiro, and Vainshtein announced a remarkable formula expressing Hurwitz numbers (counting covers of the projective line with specified simple branch points, and specified branching over one other point) in terms of Hodge integrals. We give a proof of this formula using virtual localization on the moduli space of stable maps, and describe how the proof could be simplified by the proper algebro-geometric definition of a "relative space".
Edge-contraction operations form an effective tool in various graph enumeration problems, such as counting Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants and simple and double Hurwitz numbers. These counting problems can be solved by a mechanism known as topological recursion, which is a mirror B-model corresponding to these counting problems. We show that for the case of orbifold Hurwitz numbers, the mirror objects, i.e., the spectral curve and the differential forms on it, are constructed solely from the edge-contraction operations of the counting problem in genus $0$ and one marked point. This forms a pa…
Moduli spaces of algebraic curves and closely related to them Hurwitz spaces, that is, spaces of meromorphic functions on the curves, arise naturally in numerous problems of algebraic geometry and mathematical physics, especially in relationship with the string theory and Gromov--Witten invariants. In particular, the classical Hurwitz problem about enumeration of topologically distinct ramified coverings of the sphere with prescribed ramification type reduces to the study of geometry and topology of these spaces. The cohomology rings of such spaces are complicated even in the simplest cases of…
We construct Frobenius structures of "dual type" on the moduli space of ramified coverings of $\mathbb{P}^1$ with given ramification type over two points, generalizing a construction of Dubrovin. A complete hierarchy of hydrodynamic type is obtained from the corresponding deformed flat connection. This provides a suitable framework for the Whitham theory of an enlarged class of integrable hierarchies; we treat as examples the q-deformed Gelfand-Dickey hierarchy and the sine-Gordon equation, and compute the corresponding solutions of the WDVV equations.
We consider two applications of the strata of differentials of the second kind (all residues equal to zero) with fixed multiplicities of zeros and poles: Positivity: In genus $g=0$ we show any associated divisorial projection to $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{0,n}$ is $F$-nef and hence conjectured to be nef. We compute the class for all genus when the divisorial projection forgets only simple zeros and show in these cases the genus $g=0$ projections are indeed nef. Hurwitz spaces: We show the Hurwitz spaces of degree $d$, genus $g$ covers of $\mathbb{P}^1$ with pure branching (one ramified point ove…
Enumerating ramified coverings of the sphere with fixed ramification types is a well-known problem first considered by A. Hurwitz. Up to now, explicit solutions have been obtained only for some families of ramified coverings, for instant, those realized by polynomials in one complex variable. In this paper we obtain an explicit answer for a large new family of coverings, namely, the coverings realized by simple almost polynomials, defined below. Unlike most other results in the field, our formula is obtained by elementary methods.
The \it critical filtration \rm of a Hurwitz space stratifies it according to the number of the critical values; the \it Belyi pairs \rm (three critical values) are considered as the 0-dimensional strata of these filtrations. The 1-dimensional strata (four critical values) are also considered, and their irreducible components correspond to \it Fried families\rm, the introduction of which is one of the central concepts of the paper. The Belyi function on the base of a Fried family is another central concept, which is introduced and illustrated by several examples of low degree. The paper sugges…
Spin Hurwitz numbers count ramified covers of a spin surface, weighted by the size of their automorphism group (like ordinary Hurwitz numbers), but signed $\pm 1$ according to the parity of the covering surface. These numbers were first defined by Eskin-Okounkov-Pandharipande in order to study the moduli of holomorphic differentials on a Riemann surface. They have also been related to Gromov-Witten invariants of of complex 2-folds by work of Lee-Parker and Maulik-Pandharipande. In this paper, we construct a (spin) TQFT which computes these numbers, and deduce a formula for any genus in terms o…
We consider multi-matrix models that are generating functions for the numbers of branched covers of the complex projective line ramified over $n$ fixed points $z_i$, $i=1,\dots,n$, (generalized Grotendieck's dessins d'enfants) of fixed genus, degree, and the ramification profiles at two points, $z_1$ and $z_n$. Ramifications at other $n-2$ points enter the sum with the length of the profile at $z_2$ and with the total length of profiles at the remaining $n-3$ points. We find the spectral curve of the model for $n=5$ using the loop equation technique for the above generating function represente…
A bracket is a function that assigns a number to each monomial in variables τ_0, τ_1, ... We show that any bracket satisfying the string and the dilaton relations gives rise to a power series lying in the algebra A generated by the series \sum n^{n-1} q^n/n! and \sum n^n q^n /n! . As a consequence, various series from A appear in the intersection theory of moduli spaces of curves. A connection between the counting of ramified coverings of the sphere and the intersection theory on moduli spaces allows us to prove that some natural generating functions enumerating the ramified coverings lie, yet…
We prove the quasimodularity of generating functions for counting pillowcase covers, with and without Siegel-Veech weight. Similar to prior work on torus covers, the proof is based on analyzing decompositions of half-translation surfaces into horizontal cylinders. It provides an alternative proof of the quasimodularity results of Eskin-Okounkov and a practical method to compute area Siegel-Veech constants. A main new technical tool is a quasi-polynomiality result for 2-orbifold Hurwitz numbers with completed cycles.
There is now a renewed interest to the Hurwitz tau-function, counting the isomorphism classes of Belyi pairs, arising in the study of equilateral triangulations and Grothiendicks's dessins d'enfant. It is distinguished by belonging to a particular family of Hurwitz tau-functions, possessing conventional Toda/KP integrability properties. We explain how the variety of recent observations about this function fits into the general theory of matrix model tau-functions. All such quantities possess a number of different descriptions, related in a standard way: these include Toda/KP integrability, sev…
We explore the explicit relationship between the descendant Gromov--Witten theory of target curves, operators on Fock spaces, and tropical curve counting. We prove a classical/tropical correspondence theorem for descendant invariants and give an algorithm that establishes a tropical Gromov--Witten/Hurwitz equivalence. Tropical curve counting is related to an algebra of operators on the Fock space by means of bosonification. In this manner, tropical geometry provides a convenient "graphical user interface" for Okounkov and Pandharipande's celebrated GW/H correspondence. An important goal of thi…
We study the problem of counting real simple rational functions $φ$ with prescribed ramification data (i.e. a particular class of oriented real Hurwitz numbers of genus $0$). We introduce a signed count of such functions that is invariant under change of the branch locus, thus providing a lower bound for the actual count (which does depend on such change). We prove (non-)vanishing theorems for these signed counts and study their asymptotic growth when adding further simple branch points. The approach is based on the works of Itenberg and Zvonkine (arXiv:1609.05219) which treat the polynomial c…
Quasimodular forms were first studied in the context of counting torus coverings. Here we show that a weighted version of these coverings with Siegel-Veech weights also provides quasimodular forms. We apply this to prove conjectures of Eskin and Zorich on the large genus limits of Masur-Veech volumes and of Siegel-Veech constants. In Part I we connect the geometric definition of Siegel-Veech constants both with a combinatorial counting problem and with intersection numbers on Hurwitz spaces. We introduce modified Siegel-Veech weights whose generating functions will later be shown to be quasimo…
