Quantization of branched coverings

Abstract: We identify branched coverings (continuous open surjections p:Y->X of Hausdorff spaces with uniformly bounded number of pre-images) with Hilbert C*-modules C(Y) over C(X) and with faithful unital positive conditional expectations E:C(Y)->C(X) topologically of index-finite type. The case of non-branched coverings corresponds to projective finitely generated modules and expectations (algebraically) of index-finite type. This allows to define non-commutative analogues of (branched) coverings.