A nonidentity holomorphic automorphism of a compact connected Riemann surface of genus has at most fixed points. If there were more, choose distinct fixed points and let be their sum. The Riemann-Roch theorem gives , so there is a nonconstant meromorphic function with at most simple poles at these points and no other poles. The function has at most poles and at least zeros at the remaining fixed points. Since a nonzero principal divisor has degree zero, forces . At an actual pole fixed by , the reciprocal is a local coordinate because its zero is simple. The identity therefore forces to be the identity near that pole, and the identity theorem on a Riemann surface makes it the identity everywhere.
Every nonidentity biholomorphism in the finite group has only finitely many fixed points, by the identity theorem on a Riemann surface and compactness. Because the group action is a faithful group action, the union of these finite sets does not exhaust . A point outside this union has trivial stabilizer subgroup, so its group orbit has points by the orbit-stabilizer theorem. The generic fiber of a function of the projection is such an group orbit, giving
More precisely, put and . Differentiation at gives a group homomorphism . It is injective: if a nonidentity finite-order germ had the form with and , then its th iterate would begin , so no positive iterate could be the identity. A germ equal to the identity gives the identity on by the identity theorem on a Riemann surface. Thus is a cyclic group, with derivative image the th roots of unity.
For completeness, an explicit local coordinate linearizing is
It has , and reindexing the sum gives . Therefore a coordinate on the local quotient space is . Other translates of a sufficiently small neighbourhood of are disjoint unless their translating element lies in , so this local quotient space is also a chart for . The local cyclic quotient of a Riemann surface consequently gives