Covers of surfaces with fixed branch locus

Given a connected smooth projective surface X over the complex numbers, together with a simple normal crossings divisor D on it, we study finite normal covers Y of X that are unramified outside D. Given moreover a fibration of X onto a curve C, we prove that the `height' of Y over C is bounded linearly in terms of the degree of Y over X. We indicate how an arithmetic analogue of this result, if true, can be auxiliary in proving the existence of a polynomial time algorithm that computes the mod-l Galois representations associated to a given smooth projective geometrically connected surface over the rational numbers. A precise conjecture is formulated.

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