Ramification loci of non-archimedean cubic rational functions

Abstract

For a cubic rational function with coefficients in a non-archimedean field $K$ whose residue characteristic is $0$ or greater than $3$, there are $2$ possibilities for the shape of its Berkovich ramification locus, considered as an endomorphism of the Berkovich projective line: one is the connected hull of all the critical points, and the other is consisting of $2$ disjoint segments. In this paper, we list up all the possible forms of cubic rational functions and calculate their ramification loci.