Dessins d'enfants and differential equations

Abstract

We state and solve a discrete version of the classical Riemann-Hilbert problem. In particular, we associate a Riemann-Hilbert problem to every dessin d'enfants. We show how to compute the solution for a dessin that is a tree. This amounts to finding a Fuchsian differential equation satisfied by the local inverses of a Shabat polynomial. We produce a universal annihilating operator for the inverses of a generic polynomial. We classify those plane trees that have a representation by Mobius transformations and those that have a linear representation of dimension at most two. This yields an analogue for trees of Schwarz's classical list, that is, a list of those plane trees whose Riemann-Hilbert problem has a hypergeometric solution of order at most two.