Related papers: Harmonic branched coverings and uniformization of …

We study branched covering spaces in several contexts, proving that under suitable circumstances the cover satisfies the same upper curvature bounds as the base space. The first context is of a branched cover of an arbitrary metric space…

We show that the growth inequality rate $$\limsup \frac{1}{n} \log (\# Fix (f^n))\geq \log d$$ holds for branched coverings of degree $d$ of the sphere $S^2$ having a completely invariant simply connected region $R$ with locally connected…

We characterize the cyclic branched covers of the 2-sphere where every homeomorphism of the sphere lifts to a homeomorphism of the covering surface. This answers a question that appeared in an early version of the erratum of Birman and…

We study simple branched coverings of degree d of the 2- and 3- dimensional sphere branched over oriented links. We demonstrate how to use braid charts to develop embeddings of these into $S^k \times D^2$ for $k=2,3 when $d=2,3$. This is an…

Every stable 4-sphere is identified with the double branched covering space of a trivial surface-knot space. As a result of Wall, it is known that any two orthogonal bases of every stable 4-sphere are transformed into each other by an…

We completely determine finite abelian regular branched covers of the 2-sphere $S^2$ with the property that each homeomorphism of $S^2$ preserving the branching set can be lifted.

A folding of a branched cover of the 3-sphere that is branched over a knot is a continuous map of the cover into the product of the sphere with a disk that has the property that the projection onto the sphere factor induces the covering.…

We study the properties of $\text{CAT}(\kappa)$ surfaces: length metric spaces homeomorphic to a surface having curvature bounded above in the sense of satisfying the $\text{CAT}(\kappa)$ condition locally. The main facts about…

We study the curvature of metric spaces and branched covers of Riemannian manifolds, with applications in topology and algebraic geometry. Here curvature bounds are expressed in terms of the CAT(k) inequality. We prove a general CAT(k)…

For a closed oriented surface $ \Sigma $ we define its degenerations into singular surfaces that are locally homeomorphic to wedges of disks. Let $X_{\Sigma,n}$ be the set of isomorphism classes of orientation preserving $n$-fold branched…

We relate the existence problem of harmonic maps into $S^2$ to the convex geometry of $S^2$. On one hand, this allows us to construct new examples of harmonic maps of degree 0 from compact surfaces of arbitrary genus into $S^2$. On the…

We consider codimension 2 sphere congruences in pseudo-conformal geometry that are harmonic with respect to the conformal structure of an orthogonal surface. We characterise the orthogonal surfaces of such congruences as either $S$-Willmore…

Motivated by the rich theory of harmonic maps from a 2-sphere, we study biharmonic maps from a 2-sphere in this paper. We first derive biharmonic equation for rotationally symmetric maps between rotationally symmetric 2-manifolds. We then…

We define two transforms between non-conformal harmonic maps from a surface into the 3-sphere. With these transforms one can construct, from one such harmonic map, a sequence of harmonic maps. We show that there is a correspondence between…

If all but two vertices of a triangulated sphere have degrees divisible by $k$, then the exceptional vertices are not adjacent. This theorem is proved for $k=2$ with the help of the coloring monodromy. For $k = 3, 4, 5$ colorings by the…

We construct a family of smooth branched coverings of degree $2$ of the sphere $S^2$ having a completely invariant indecomposable continuum $K$ and infinitely many Wada Lakes.

We construct branched double coverings by certain direct products of manifolds for connected sums of copies of sphere bundles over the 2-sphere. As an application we answer a question of Kotschick and Loeh up to dimension five. More…

We prove the connectedness of the following locus: the space of degree-$d$ branched self-coverings of $S^2$ with two critical points of order $d$, one of which is $n$-periodic.

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 investigate harmonic maps from weighted graphs into metric spaces that locally admit unique centers of gravity, like Alexandrov spaces with upper curvature bounds. We prove an existence result by constructing an iterative geometric…