Non-manifold monodromy spaces of branched coverings between manifolds

Abstract

By a construction of Berstein and Edmonds every proper branched cover f between manifolds is a factor of a branched covering orbit map from a locally connected and locally compact Hausdorff space called the monodromy space of f to the target manifold. For proper branched covers between 2-manifolds the monodromy space is known to be a manifold. We show that this does not generalize to dimension 3 by constructing a self-map of the 3-sphere for which the monodromy space is not a locally contractible space.