Necessary Conditions for the Existence of Branched Coverings.
Nonfibered knots and representation shifts
A conjecture of [swTAMS] states that a knot is nonfibered if and only if its infinite cyclic cover has uncountably many finite covers. We prove the conjecture for a class of knots that includes all knots of genus 1, using techniques from symbolic dynamics.
Non-standard automorphisms of branched coverings of a disk and a sphere
Let Y be a closed 2-dimensional disk or a 2-sphere. We consider a simple, d-sheeted branched covering π: X → Y. We fix a base point A₀ in Y (A₀ ∈ ∂Y if Y is a disk). We consider the homeomorphisms h of Y which fix ∂Y pointwise and lift to homeomorphisms ϕ of X-the automorphisms of π. We prove that if Y is a sphere then every such ϕ is isotopic by a fiber-preserving isotopy to an automorphism which fixes the fiber pointwise. If Y is a disk, we describe explicitly a small set of automorphisms of...