A Combinatorial Presentation for Branched Coverings of the 2-Sphere

Abstract

William Thurston (1946-2012) gave a combinatorial characterization for generic branched self-coverings of the two-sphere by associating a planar graph to them 10.48550/arXiv.1502.04760. By generalizing the notion of local balancing, the author extends the Thurston result to encompass any branched covering of the two-sphere. As an application, we supply a lower bound for the number of equivalence classes of real rational functions for each given ramification profile. Furthermore, as a consequence, we obtain a new proof for a theorem ( 10.2307/3062151 , 10.4007/annals.2009.170.863 , 10.1090/S0894-0347-09-00640-7 ) that corresponds to a special case of a reality problem in enumerative geometry which was known as the B. \& M. Shapiro Conjecture, now it is a theorem \cite{MR2552110}. The theorem version that we prove concerns generic rational functions, assuring that if all critical points of that function are real, then we can transform it into a rational map with real coefficients by post-composition with an automorphism of $\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^{1}$. The proof we present is constructive and founded on elementary arguments.}