arXiv research

Study of lifting maps in branched covers of 3-manifolds, showing non-injectivity.

The paper details folding of branched covers of the 3-sphere over knots.

Taut foliations map leaves to branched 2-sphere covers.

The paper studies harmonic maps between surfaces homotopic to a covering map, proving uniqueness and injectivity of Hopf differential.

Solve arc diagrams on surfaces via branched covers.

Harmonic maps from surfaces to CAT(k) spheres are branched coverings.

Open manifolds can be covered by $\mathbb{R}^m$ with finite or infinite degree.

The image of the branch set of a PL branched cover between PL $n$-manifolds is a simplicial $(n-2)$-complex. We demonstrate that the reverse implication also holds: an open and discrete map $f \colon \mathbb{S}^n \to \mathbb{S}^n$ with the image of the branch set contained in a simplicial $(n-2)$-complex is equivalent …

The Birman-Hilden theory is extended to infinite type surfaces and branched covers.

By a construction of Berstein and Edmonds every proper branched cover f between manifolds is a factor of a branched covering orbit map from a locally connected and locally compact Hausdorff space called the monodromy space of f to the target manifold. For proper branched covers between 2-manifolds the monodromy space i…

Given a sub-hyperbolic semi-rational branched covering which is not CLH-equivalent a rational map, it must have the non-empty canonical Thurston obstruction. By using this canonical Thurston obstruction, we decompose this dynamical system in this paper into several sub-dynamical systems. Each of these sub-dynamical sys…

Study branched coverings of singular (G,X)-manifolds, solving open questions.

We study the connections among the mapping class group of the twice punctured torus, the cyclic branched coverings of (1,1)-knots and the cyclic presentations of groups. We give the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the n-fold strongly-cyclic branched coverings of (1,1)-knots, thro…

Techniques for constructing codimension 2 embeddings and immersions of the 2 and 3-fold branched covers of the 3 and 4-dimensional spheres are presented. These covers are in braided form, and it is in this sense that they are folded. More precisely the composition of the embedding (or immersion) and the canonical proje…

We show that Brieskorn manifolds with their standard contact structures are contact branched coverings of spheres. This covering maps a contact open book decomposition of the Brieskorn manifold onto a Milnor open book of the sphere.

Let K be a knot in an integral homology 3-sphere and let B denote the 2-fold branched cover of the integral homology sphere branched along K. We construct a map from the slice of characters with trace free along meridians in the SL(2, C)-character variety of the knot exterior to the SL(2, C)-character variety of 2-fold…

We study global injectivity of proper branched coverings defined on the Euclidean $n$-ball in the case when the branch set is compact. In particular we show that such mappings are homeomorphisms when $n=3$ or when the branch set is empty. This proves the corresponding cases of a question of Vuorinen from [Vuo79].

In this paper we study the homeomorphisms of the disk that are liftable with respect to a simple branched covering. Since any such homeomorphism maps the branch set of the covering onto itself and liftability is invariant up to isotopy fixing the branch set, we are dealing in fact with liftable braids. We prove that th…

We prove that while there are maps $\bT^4\to\#^3(\bS^2\times\bS^2)$ of arbitrarily large degree, there is no branched cover from $4$-torus to $\#^3(\bS^2\times \bS^2)$. More generally, we obtain that, as long as $N$ satisfies a suitable cohomological condition, any $π_1$-surjective branched cover $\bT^n \to N$ is a hom…

We construct branched double coverings by certain direct products of manifolds for connected sums of copies of sphere bundles over the 2-sphere. As an application we answer a question of Kotschick and Loeh up to dimension five. More precisely, we show that: (1) every simply connected, closed four-manifold admits a bran…

We show that, if the local dimension of the branch set of a discrete and open mapping $f\colon M\to N$ between $n$-manifolds is less than $(n-2)$ at a point $y$ of the image of the branch set $fB_f$, then the local monodromy of $f$ at $y$ is perfect. In particular, for generalized branched covers between $n$-manifolds …

Isometric embeddings of Teichmüller spaces are derived from branched coverings.

We give an explicit formula for a 2-fold branched covering from $\mathbb{CP}^2$ to $S^4$, and relate it to other maps between quotients of $S^2\times{S^2}$.

We study canonical decompositions of postcritically finite branched coverings of the 2-sphere, as defined by K. Pilgrim. We show that every hyperbolic cycle in the decomposition does not have a Thurston obstruction. It is thus Thurston equivalent to a rational map.

We construct a generalization of twistor spaces of hypercomplex manifolds and hyper-Kahler manifolds $M$, by generalizing the twistor $\mathbb{P}^{1}$ to a more general complex manifold $Q$. The resulting manifold $X$ is complex if and only if $Q$ admits a holomorphic map to $\mathbb{P}^1$. We make branched double cove…

We show that an entire branched cover of finite distortion cannot have a compact branch set if its distortion satisfies a certain asymptotic growth condition. We furthermore show that this bound is strict by constructing an entire, continuous, open and discrete mapping of finite distortion which is piecewise smooth, ha…

Let $p:Σ'\toΣ$ be a finite Galois cover, possibly branched, with Galois group $G$. We are interested in the structure of the cohomology of $Σ'$ as a module over $G$. We treat the cases of branched and unbranched covers separately. In the case of branched covers, we give a complete classification of possible module stru…

Every compact symplectic 4-manifold can be realized as a branched cover of the complex projective plane branched along a symplectic curve with cusp and node singularities; the covering map is induced by a triple of sections of a "very ample" line bundle. In this paper, we give an explicit formula describing the behavio…

Every open Riemann surface can be triangulated with equilateral triangles.

Extends Thurston's combinatorial characterization to all branched coverings of the 2-sphere.

Formula for Lefschetz number of knot branched covers.

Surfaces of finite geometric type are complete, immersed into the tree-dimensional Euclidean space with finite total curvature and Gauss map extending to an oriented compact surface as a smooth branched covering map over the unit sphere of the Euclidean three dimensional space. In a recent preprint J. Jorge and F. Merc…

We show that every strongly-cyclic branched covering of a (1,1)-knot is a Dunwoody manifold. This result, together with the converse statement previously obtained by Grasselli and Mulazzani, proves that the class of Dunwoody manifolds coincides with the class of strongly-cyclic branched coverings of (1,1)-knots. As a c…

We show that simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces up to certain local ribbon moves bijectively represent orientable 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies up to handle sliding and addition/deletion of cancelling handles. As a consequence, we obtain an equivalence theorem for simple coverings of S^3 branched over…

Compactifies the space of branched coverings of the sphere.

A map from 3-manifold skein to Lagrangian skein via holomorphic curve counting.

We prove that there is a knot $K$ transverse to $ξ_{std}$, the tight contact structure of $S^3$, such that every contact 3-manifold $(M, ξ)$ can be obtained as a contact covering branched along $K$. By contact covering we mean a map $\varphi: M \to S^3$ branched along $K$ such that $ξ$ is contact isotopic to the liftin…

Study on Gauss map of anisotropic minimal surfaces with Morse index estimates.

We give examples of harmonic maps between negatively curved manifolds with special properties. These negatively curved manifolds do not have the homotopy type of a locally symmetric space.

We consider components of Hurwitz moduli space of G-Galois covers and set up a powerful algebraic framework to study the set of corresponding equivalence classes of monodromy maps. Within that we study geometric stabilisation by various G-covers branched over the disc. Our results addresses the problem to decide equiva…

The paper studies which branched covers can be lifted to braided embeddings.

Course on knots using branched coverings.

Formula compares metrics on branched coverings of line bundles.

We exhibit the traceless $SU(2)$ character variety of a 6-punctured 2-sphere as a 2-fold branched cover of ${\mathbb{C}}P^3$, branched over the singular Kummer surface, with the branch locus in $R(S^2,6)$ corresponding to the binary dihedral representations. This follows from an analysis of the map induced on $SU(2)$ c…

New criterion for branched covers between 2-spheres.

A branched covering surface-knot is a surface-knot in the form of a branched covering over a surface-knot. For a branched covering surface-knot, we have a numerical invariant called the simplifying number. We show that branched covering surface-knots with degree three have the simplifying numbers less than three.

A branched covering surface-knot is a surface-knot in the form of a branched covering over an oriented surface-knot $F$, where we include the case when the covering has no branch points. A branched covering surface-knot is presented by a graph called a chart on a surface diagram of $F$. We can simplify a branched cover…

New examples show transverse knots are determined by their branched covers.