Towards studying the structure of triple Hurwitz numbers

Abstract

Going beyond the studies of single and double Hurwitz numbers, we report some progress towards studying Hurwitz numbers which correspond to ramified coverings of the Riemann sphere involving three nonsimple branch points. We first prove a recursion which implies a fundamental identity of Frobenius enumerating factorizations of a permutation in group algebra theory. We next apply the recursion to study Hurwitz numbers involving three nonsimple branch points (besides simple ones),two of them having deterministic ramification profiles while the remaining one having a prescribed number of preimages. The recursion allows us to obtain recurrences as well as explicit formulas for these numbers which also generalize a number of existing results on single and double Hurwitz numbers. The case where one of the nonsimple branch points with deterministic profile has a unique preimage (one-part quasi-triple Hurwitz numbers {or $(1,m)$-part triple Hurwitz numbers}) is particularly studied in detail. We prove an attractive dimension-reduction formula from which any one-part quasi-triple Hurwitz number can be reduced to quasi-triple Hurwitz numbers where both with deterministic profiles are fully ramified. We also obtain the polynomiality of one-part quasi-triple Hurwitz numbers analogous to that implied by the remarkable ELSV formula for single Hurwitz numbers, and discuss the potential connection to intersection theory.