A note on the Hurwitz problem and cone spherical metrics

Abstract

We are motivated by cone spherical metrics on compact Riemann surfaces of positive genus to solve a special case of the Hurwitz problem. Precisely speaking, letting $d,\,g$ and $\ell$ be three positive integers and $\Lambda$ be the following collection of $(\ell+2)$ partitions of a positive integer $d$: \[(a_1,\cdots, a_p),\,(b_1,\cdots, b_q),\,(m_1+1,1,\cdots,1),\cdots, (m_{\ell}+1,1,\cdots,1),\] where $(m_1,\cdots, m_{\ell})$ is a partition of $p+q-2+2g$, we prove that there exists a branched cover from some compact Riemann surface of genus $g$ to the Riemann sphere ${\Bbb P}^1$ with branch data $\Lambda$. An analogue for the genus-zero case was found by the first two authors ({\it Algebra Colloq.} {\bf 27} (2020), no. 2, 231-246), who were stimulated by such metrics on ${\Bbb P}^1$ and conjectured the veracity of the above statement there.