Monodromy groups of polynomials of composition length 2

Abstract

We study the monodromy groups of compositions of two indecomposable polynomials. In particular, we show that such monodromy groups either fulfill a certain "largeness" property, or are in an explicit list of exceptions. Such largeness results are crucial for dealing with compositions of more than two polynomials, and consequently are expected to have a wide range of applications to problems concerning the arithmetic of polynomials. Concretely, our main result is a key ingredient in the solution of a long-standing open problem due to Davenport, Lewis and Schinzel, achieved in a companion paper.