The action of the Torelli group on the homology of representation spaces is nontrivial (Q1568694): Difference between revisions

The mapping class group and its subgroup, the Torelli group, of the Riemannian surface \(M\) have a natural action on the space \(R_{\text{SU}(2)}(M)\) of \(\text{SU}(2)\)-representations of the fundamental group of \(M\) and its subspace \(R_{\text{SU}(2)}(M)_{\text{irred}}\) of irreducibles. In this paper the authors compute the cohomologies \(H^*(R_{\text{SU}(2)}(M))\), \(H^*(R_{\text{SU}(2)}(M)_{\text{irred}})\) of both of these spaces and show that the induced action of the Torelli group is non-trivial. They develop an obstruction theory to study a unipotent group action on a short exact sequence where the action is trivial at the two end terms. Applying this theory, the triviality or non-triviality of the action by an element \(\gamma\) of \(I_{(g,1)}\) on \(H^d_{\text{SU}(2)}(R_{\text{SU}(2)}(M)^\#\), \(R_{\text{SU}(2)}(M)^\#_{\text{red}})\) is equivalent to a certain obstruction map \(\Psi_d(\gamma): \ker i^*_d\to \text{coker }i^*_{d- 1}\) being zero or not. The authors combine the methods of Atiyah and Bott with those of Johnson to place the problem in the general framework of computing characteristic classes.