No Arabic abstract
We present a number of examples to illustrate the use of small quotient dessins as substitutes for their often much larger and more complicated Galois (minimal regular) covers. In doing so we employ several useful group-theoretic techniques, such as the Frobenius character formula for counting triples in a finite group, pointing out some common traps and misconceptions associated with them. Although our examples are all chosen from Hurwitz curves and groups, they are relevant to dessins of any type.
It is known that every finite group can be represented as the full group of automorphisms of a suitable compact dessin denfant. In this paper, we give a constructive and easy proof that the same holds for any countable group by considering non-compact dessins. Moreover, we show that any tame action of a countable group is so realizable.
A dessin denfant, or dessin, is a bicolored graph embedded into a Riemann surface, and the monodromy group is an algebraic invariant of the dessin generated by rotations of edges about black and white vertices. A rational billiards surface is a two dimensional surface that allows one to view the path of a billiards ball as a continuous path. In this paper, we classify the monodromy groups of dessins associated to rational triangular billiards surfaces.
We show that if a group automorphism of a Cremona group of arbitrary rank is also a homeomorphism with respect to either the Zariski or the Euclidean topology, then it is inner up to a field automorphism of the base-field. Moreover, we show that a similar result holds if we consider groups of polynomial automorphisms of affine spaces instead of Cremona groups.
Let $n, k geq 3$. In this paper, we analyse the quotient group $B_n/Gamma_k(P_n)$ of the Artin braid group $B_n$ by the subgroup $Gamma_k(P_n)$ belonging to the lower central series of the Artin pure braid group $P_n$. We prove that it is an almost-crystallographic group. We then focus more specifically on the case $k=3$. If $n geq 5$, and if $tau in N$ is such that $gcd(tau, 6) = 1$, we show that $B_n/Gamma_3 (P_n)$ possesses torsion $tau$ if and only if $S_n$ does, and we prove that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the conjugacy classes of elements of order $tau$ in $B_n/Gamma_3 (P_n)$ with those of elements of order $tau$ in the symmetric group $S_n$. We also exhibit a presentation for the almost-crystallographic group $B_n/Gamma_3 (P_n)$. Finally, we obtain some $4$-dimensional almost-Bieberbach subgroups of $B_3/Gamma_3 (P_3)$, we explain how to obtain almost-Bieberbach subgroups of $B_4/Gamma_3(P_4)$ and $B_3/Gamma_4(P_3)$, and we exhibit explicit elements of order $5$ in $B_5/Gamma_3 (P_5)$.
We prove that an analogue of Jordans theorem on finite subgroups of general linear groups holds for the groups of biregular automorphisms of algebraic surfaces. This gives a positive answer to a question of Vladimir L. Popov.