Related papers: Algorithmic aspects of branched coverings II/V. Sp…

This is the announcement, and the long summary, of a series of articles on the algorithmic study of Thurston maps. We describe branched coverings of the sphere in terms of group-theoretical objects called bisets, and develop a theory of…

We develop a general theory of "bisets": sets with two commuting group actions. They naturally encode topological correspondences. Just as van Kampen's theorem decomposes into a graph of groups the fundamental group of a space given with a…

Thurston maps are branched self-coverings of the sphere whose critical points have finite forward orbits. We give combinatorial and algebraic characterizations of Thurston maps that are isotopic to expanding maps as "Levy-free" maps and as…

We find a constructive bound for the word length of a generating set for the centralizer of an element of the Mapping Class Group. As a consequence, we show that it is algorithmically decidable whether two postcritically finite branched…

Let $\tilde f\colon(S^2,\tilde A)\to(S^2,\tilde A)$ be a Thurston map and let $M(\tilde f)$ be its mapping class biset: isotopy classes rel $\tilde A$ of maps obtained by pre- and post-composing $\tilde f$ by the mapping class group of…

The key result in the present paper is a direct analogue of the celebrated Thurston's Theorem for marked Thurston maps with parabolic orbifolds. Combining this result with previously developed techniques, we prove that every Thurston map…

Thurston obtained a combinatorial characterization for generic branched self-coverings that preserve the orientation of the oriented 2-sphere by associating a planar graph to them [arXiv:1502.04760]. In this work, the Thurston result is…

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…

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…

We demonstrate that the question whether or not a given postcritically finite topological ramified covering map of the 2-sphere is Thurston equivalent to a rational map is algorithmically decidable.

Among Thurston maps (orientation-preserving, postcritically finite branched coverings of the 2-sphere to itself), those that arise as subdivision maps of a finite subdivision rule form a special family. For such maps, we investigate…

In 1980s, Thurston established a topological characterization theorem for postcritically finite rational maps. In this paper, a decomposition theorem for a class of postcritically infinite branched covering termed `Herman map' is developed.…

An orientation-preserving branched covering map $f\colon S^2 \to S^2$ is called a critically fixed Thurston map if $f$ fixes each of its critical points. It was recently shown that there is an explicit one-to-one correspondence between…

We study Thurston equivalence classes of quadratic post-critically finite branched coverings. For these maps, we introduce and study invariant spanning trees. We give a computational procedure for searching for invariant spanning trees.…

We provide a complete combinatorial classification of critically fixed anti-Thurston maps, i.e., orientation-reversing branched covers of the 2-sphere that fix every critical point. The first step in the proof, and an interesting result in…

This note studies the Burnside problem for homeomorphism groups of compact connected manifolds. For surfaces, we prove that the identity component of the homeomorphism group is torsion-free precisely when the surface is not the sphere,…

We study the dynamics of Thurston maps under iteration. These are branched covering maps $f$ of 2-spheres $S^2$ with a finite set $\mathop{post}(f)$ of postcritical points. We also assume that the maps are expanding in a suitable sense.…

We obtain an analog of the prime number theorem for a class of branched covering maps on the $2$-sphere $S^2$ called expanding Thurston maps, which are topological models of some non-uniformly expanding rational maps without any smoothness…

The goal of this note is to generalize Thurston's Topological Characterization of Rational Functions to the setting when both the covering degree and the set of marked points are infinite. A relevant class of branched coverings are…

An orientation-preserving branched covering $f: S^2 \to S^2$ is a nearly Euclidean Thurston (NET) map if each critical point is simple and its postcritical set has exactly four points. Inspired by classical, non-dynamical notions such as…