Arithmetic of three-point covers

Any cover of the Riemann sphere with rational branch points is known to be defined over the algebraic numbers. Hence the Galois group of the rationals acts on the category of such branched covers. Particulars about this action are still scarce, even in the simplest non-abelian case, the case with just three branch points. The first paper in this thesis describes a new algorithm, which uses modular form techniques in order to compute the equations for a cover of the Riemann sphere which is hyperelliptic as a curve. Given such equations one may easily determine the Galois orbit to which the cover belongs. We compute and discuss all covers of degree 6 and genus 2, and complete the case of covers of degree 7 and genus 1 as well. The second paper gives a proof of a formula for the number of three-point G-covers with a fixed special G-deformation datum (here G is a finite group which is strictly divisible by a prime number p). Since such a datum is an invariant for the action of the inertia group at p, this gives partial information about the action of this inertia group