Plane curves associated to character varieties of 3-manifolds (Q1340648)

Consider a compact 3-manifold \(M\) with boundary consisting of a single torus. (For example, the complement of a knot \(K\).) The authors describe a certain affine algebraic curve \(D_M\) which is naturally associated to the character variety of \(M\). A basis for the peripheral subgroup of \(M\) determines an embedding \(p_B\) of \(D_M\) into \(C^* \times C^*\). The closure in \(C^2\) of \(p_B(D_M)\) is a plane algebraic curve and is defined by a polynomial \(A_{M,B}\). The polynomial is an invariant of \(M\). They show that the slopes of the sides of the Newton polygon of \(A_M\) are boundary slopes of incompressible surfaces in \(M\) which correspond to ideal points of \(D_M\). In the case that \(M\) is the complement of a knot \(K\) in a homology 3-sphere, they also discuss the relationship between \(A_M\) and the Alexander polynomial of \(K\) and they give computations of \(A_K\) for several knots \(K\).