On s'intéresse à une compactification, due à Ekedahl, Lando, Shapiro et Vainshtein, du champ des courbes lisses munies de fonctions méromorphes d'ordres fixés. Celle-ci est obtenue comme une adhérence du champ de départ dans un champ propre. On commence par en donner deux constructions alternatives et on étudie les déformations de ses points. On la relie par la suite à la compactification à la Harris-Mumford par les revêtements admissibles et on donne une interprétation modulaire des points du bord. / We study a compactification, due to Ekedahl, Lando, Shapiro and Vainshtein, of the stack of smooth curves endowed with meromorphic functions having fixed orders. The original compactification is obtained as the closure of the initial stack in a proper substack. We start by giving two alternative constructions of the E.L.S.V compactification and by studying the deformation theory of its points. We finally link it to the Harris-Mumford compactification by admissible covers and give a modular interpretation of boundary points.

Le but de cette thèse est d’étudier, à l’aide d’outils combinatoires simples, différentes structures géométriques construites à partir de l’action d’un polynôme ou d’une fraction rationnelle. Nous considérerons d’abord la structure de l'ensemble des solutions séparatrices d’un champ de vecteurs polynomial ou rationnel. Nous allons établir plusieurs modèles combinatoires de ces cartes planaires, ainsi qu’une formule fermée énumérant les différentes structures topologiques dans le cas polynomial. Puis nous parlerons de revêtements ramifiés de la sphère que nous modéliserons, via un objet combinatoire nommée carte équilibrée, à partir d’une idée originale de W.Thurston. Ce modèle nous permettra de démontrer (géométriquement) de nombreuses propriétés de ces objets, et d’offrir une nouvelle approche et de nouvelles perspectives au problème d’Hurwitz, qui reste encore aujourd’hui un problème ouvert. Et enfin nous aborderons le sujet de la dynamique holomorphe via les primitives majeures dont l’utilité est de permettre de paramétrer les systèmes dynamiques engendrés par l’itération de polynômes. Cette approche nous permettra de construire une bijection entre les suites de parking et les arbres de Cayley, ainsi que d’établir une formule fermée liée à l’énumération d’un certain type d’arbres relié à la fois aux primitives majeures et aux revêtements ramifiés polynomiaux. / The main topic of this thesis is to study, thanks to simple combinatorial tools, various geometric structures coming from the action of a complex polynomial or a rational function on the sphere. The first structure concerns separatrix solutions of polynomial or rational vector fields. We will establish several combinatorial models of these planar maps, as well as a closed formula enumerating the different topological structures that arise in the polynomial settings. Then, we will focus on branched coverings of the sphere. We establish a combinatorial coding of these mappings using the concept of balanced maps, following an original idea of W. Thurston. This combinatorics allows us to prove (geometrically) several properties about branched coverings, and gives us a new approach and perspective to address the still open Hurwitz problem. Finally, we discuss a dynamical problem represented by primitive majors. The utility of these objects is to allow us to parameterize dynamical systems generated by the iterations of polynomials. This approach will enable us to construct a bijection between parking functions and Cayley trees, and to establish a closed formula enumerating a certain type of trees related to both primitive majors and polynomial branched coverings.

This work refers to ball-intersections bodies as well as covering, packing, and kissing problems related to balls and spheres in normed spaces. A quick introduction to these topics and an overview of our results is given in Section 1.1 of Chapter 1. The needed background knowledge is collected in Section 1.2, also in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 we define ball-intersection bodies and investigate special classes of them: ball-hulls, ball-intersections, equilateral ball-polyhedra, complete bodies and bodies of constant width. Thus, relations between the ball-hull and the ball-intersection of a set are given. We extend a minimal property of a special class of equilateral ball-polyhedra, known as Theorem of Chakerian, to all normed planes. In order to investigate bodies of constant width, we develop a concept of affine orthogonality, which is new even for the Euclidean subcase. In Chapter 2 we solve kissing, covering, and packing problems. For a given family of circles and lines we find at least one, but for some families even all circles kissing all the members of this family. For that reason we prove that a strictly convex, smooth normed plane is a topological Möbius plane. We give an exact geometric description of the maximal radius of all homothets of the unit disc that can be covered by 3 or 4 translates of it. Also we investigate configurations related to such coverings, namely a regular 4-covering and a Miquelian configuration of circles. We find the concealment number for a packing of translates of the unit ball.