Tuesday Seminar on Topology

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Date, time & place Tuesday 17:00 - 18:30 056Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Organizer(s) KAWAZUMI Nariya, KITAYAMA Takahiro, SAKASAI Takuya

2018/11/08

10:30-12:00   Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Michael Heusener (Université Clermont Auvergne)
Deformations of diagonal representations of knot groups into $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ (ENGLISH)
[ Abstract ]
This is joint work with Leila Ben Abdelghani, Monastir (Tunisia).

Given a manifold $M$, the variety of representations of $\pi_1(M)$ into $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ and the variety of characters of such representations both contain information of the topology of $M$. Since the foundational work of W.P. Thurston and Culler & Shalen, the varieties of $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-characters have been extensively studied. This is specially interesting for $3$-dimensional manifolds, where the fundamental group and the geometrical properties of the manifold are strongly related.

However, much less is known of the character varieties for other groups, notably for $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ with $n\geq 3$. The $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$-character varieties for free groups have been studied by S. Lawton and P. Will, and the $\mathrm{SL}(3,\mathbb{C})$-character variety of torus knot groups has been determined by V. Munoz and J. Porti.

In this talk I will present some results concerning the deformations of diagonal representations of knot groups in basic notations and some recent results concerning the representation and character varieties of $3$-manifold groups and in particular knot groups. In particular, we are interested in the local structure of the $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$-representation variety at the diagonal representation.