English

Alternating group covers of the affine line

Number Theory 2016-01-15 v2

Abstract

We prove Abhyankar's Inertia Conjecture for the alternating group A_{p+2} on p+2 letters when p = 2 mod 3, by showing that every possible inertia group occurs for a (wildly ramified) A_{p+2}-Galois cover of the projective k-line branched only at infinity where k is an algebraically closed field of characteristic p > 0. More generally, when 1 < s < p and gcd(p-1, s+1)=1, we prove that all but finitely many rational numbers which satisfy the obvious necessary conditions occur as the upper jump in the filtration of higher ramification groups of an A_{p+s}-Galois cover of the projective line branched only at infinity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0908.2140,
  title  = {Alternating group covers of the affine line},
  author = {Jeremy Muskat and Rachel Pries},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.2140},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Minor revisions, to appear in Israel Journal of Mathematics.