Nonrigid constructions in Galois theory

Abstract: The context for this paper is the Inverse Galois Problem. First we give an if and only if condition that a finite group is the group of a Galois regular extension of R(X) with only real branch points. It is that the group is generated by elements of order 2 (Theorem 1.1 (a)). We use previous work on the action of the complex conjugation on covers of P 1 [FrD]. We also use Fried and Völklein [FrV] and Pop [P] to show each finite group is the Galois group of a Galois regular extension of Qtr (X). Here Qtr is the field of all totally real algebraic numbers (Theorem 5.7). §1, §2 and §3 discuss consequences, generalizations and related questions. The second part of the paper, §4 and §5, concerns descent of fields of definition from R to Q. Use of Hurwitz families reduces the problem to finding Q-rational point on a special algebraic curve. Our first application considers realizing the symmetric group Sm as the group of a Galois extension of Q(X), regular over Q, satisfying two further conditions. These are that the extension has four branch points, and it also has some totally real residue class field specializations. Such extensions exist for m = 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 (Theorem 4.11). Suppose that m is a prime larger than 7. Theorem 5.1 shows that the dihedral group