The aim of this paper is to prove that a large class of quaternionic slice regular functions result to be (ramified) covering maps. By means of the topological implications of this fact and by providing further topological structures, we are able to give suitable natural conditions for the existence of $k$-th $star$-roots of a slice regular function. Moreover, we are also able to compute all the solutions which, quite surprisingly, in the most general case, are in number of $k^2$. The last part is devoted to compute the monodromy and to present a technique to compute all the $k^2$ roots starting from one of them.
In this paper, we study the (possible) solutions of the equation $exp_{*}(f)=g$, where $g$ is a slice regular never vanishing function on a circular domain of the quaternions $mathbb{H}$ and $exp_{*}$ is the natural generalization of the usual exponential to the algebra of slice regular functions. Any function $f$ which satisfies $exp_{*}(f)=g$ is called a $*$-logarithm of $g$. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions, expressed in terms of the zero set of the ``vector part $g_{v}$ of $g$, for the existence of a $*$-logarithm of $g$, under a natural topological condition on the domain $Omega$. By the way, we prove an existence result if $g_{v}$ has no non-real isolated zeroes; we are also able to give a comprehensive approach to deal with more general cases. We are thus able to obtain an existence result when the non-real isolated zeroes of $g_{v}$ are finite, the domain is either the unit ball, or $mathbb{H}$, or $mathbb{D}$ and a further condition on the ``real part $g_{0}$ of $g$ is satisfied (see Theorem 6.19 for a precise statement). We also find some unexpected uniqueness results, again related to the zero set of $g_{v}$, in sharp contrast with the complex case. A number of examples are given throughout the paper in order to show the sharpness of the required conditions.
Given a quaternionic slice regular function $f$, we give a direct and effective way to compute the coefficients of its spherical expansion at any point. Such coefficients are obtained in terms of spherical and slice derivatives of the function itself. Afterwards, we compare the coefficients of $f$ with those of its slice derivative $partial_{c}f$ obtaining a countable family of differential equations satisfied by any slice regular function. The results are proved in all details and are accompanied to several examples. For some of the results, we also give alternative proofs.
We prove that a reduced and irreducible algebraic surface in $mathbb{CP}^{3}$ containing infinitely many twistor lines cannot have odd degree. Then, exploiting the theory of quaternionic slice regularity and the normalization map of a surface, we give constructive existence results for even degrees.
