Symmetric Galois Groups Under Specialization

There are several variants of the inverse Galois problem which involve restrictions on ramification. In this paper we give sufficient conditions that a given finite group $G$ occurs infinitely often as a Galois group over the rationals $\mathbb Q$ with all nontrivial inertia groups of order $2$. Notably any such realization of $G$ can be translated up to a quadratic field over which the corresponding realization of $G$ is unramified. The sufficient conditions are imposed on...

As Jordan observed in 1870, just as univariate polynomials have Galois groups, so do problems in enumerative geometry. Despite this pedigree, the study of Galois groups in enumerative geometry was dormant for a century, with a systematic study only occuring in the past 15 years. We discuss the current directions of this study, including open problems and conjectures.

Let $X$ be a smooth projective connected curve of genus $g\ge 2$ defined over an algebraically closed field $k$ of characteristic $p>0$. Let $G$ be a finite group, $P$ a Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$ and $N_G(P)$ its normalizer in $G$. We show that if there exists an \'etale Galois cover $Y\to X$ with group $N_G(P)$, then $G$ is the Galois group wan \'etale Galois cover $\mathcal{Y}\to\mathcal{X}$, where the genus of $\mathcal{X}$ depends on the order of $G$, the number of Sylow ...

In this work we study the monodromy group of covers $\varphi \circ \psi$ of curves \linebreak $\mathcal{Y}\xrightarrow {\quad {\psi}} \mathcal{X} \xrightarrow {\quad \varphi} \mathbb{P}^{1}$, where $\psi$ is a $q$-fold cyclic \'etale cover and $\varphi$ is a totally ramified $p$-fold cover, with $p$ and $q$ different prime numbers with $p$ odd. We show that the Galois group $\mathcal{G}$ of the Galois closure $\mathcal{Z}$ of $\varphi \circ \psi$ is of the form $ \mathcal{G...

This survey is about Galois theory of curves in characteristic p, a topic which has inspired major research in algebraic geometry and number theory and which contains many open questions. We illustrate important phenomena which occur for covers of curves in characteristic p. We explain key results on the structure of fundamental groups. We end by describing areas of active research and giving two new results about the genus and p-rank of certain covers of the affine line.

Given a field $k$ of characteristic zero and an indeterminate $T$ over $k$, we investigate the local behaviour at primes of $k$ of finite Galois extensions of $k$ arising as specializations of finite Galois extensions $E/k(T)$ (with $E/k$ regular) at points $t_0 \in \mathbb{P}^1(k)$. We provide a general result about decomposition groups at primes of $k$ in specializations, extending a fundamental result of Beckmann concerning inertia groups. We then apply our result to study...

Studying two point branched Galois covers of the projective line we prove the Inertia Conjecture for the Alternating groups $A_{p+1}$, $A_{p+3}$, $A_{p+4}$ for any odd prime $p \equiv 2 \pmod{3}$ and for the group $A_{p+5}$ when additionally $4 \nmid (p+1)$ and $p \geq 17$. We obtain a generalization of a patching result by Raynaud which reduces these proofs to showing the realizations of the \'{e}tale Galois covers of the affine line with a fewer candidates for the inertia g...

We address two interrelated problems concerning permutation of roots of univariate polynomials whose coefficients depend on parameters. First, we compute the Galois group of polynomials $\varphi(x)\in\mathbb{C}[t_1,\cdots,t_k][x]$ over $\mathbb{C}(t_1,\cdots,t_k)$. Provided that the corresponding multivariate polynomial $\varphi(x,t_1,\cdots,t_k)$ is generic with respect to its support $A\subset \mathbb{Z}^{k+1}$, we determine the latter Galois group for any $A$. Second, we d...

Let $E/\mathbb Q(t)$ be an elliptic curve and let $t_0 \in \mathbb Q$ be a rational number for which the specialization $E_{t_0}$ is an elliptic curve. In 2015, Gusi\'c and Tadi\'c gave an easy-to-check criterion, based only on a Weierstrass equation for $E/\mathbb Q(t)$, that is sufficient to conclude that the specialization map at $t_0$ is injective. The criterion critically requires that $E$ has nontrivial $\mathbb Q(t)$-rational 2-torsion points. In this article, we expla...

The Galois/monodromy group of a family of geometric problems or equations is a subtle invariant that encodes the structure of the solutions. Computing monodromy permutations using numerical algebraic geometry gives information about the group, but can only determine it when it is the full symmetric group. We give numerical methods to compute the Galois group and study it when it is not the full symmetric group. One algorithm computes generators while the other gives informati...