Realisation of groups as automorphism groups in categories

Abstract

It is shown that in various categories, including many consisting of maps or hypermaps, oriented or unoriented, of a given hyperbolic type, every countable group $A$ is isomorphic to the automorphism group of uncountably many non-isomorphic objects, infinitely many of them finite if $A$ is finite. In particular, this applies to dessins d'enfants, regarded as finite oriented hypermaps. The proof, involving maximal subgroups of various triangle groups, yields a simple construction of a regular map whose automorphism group contains an isomorphic copy of every finite group.