The Yang-Mills measure in the Kauffman bracket skein module (Q1409268)

The authors construct for each closed, orientable surface \(\Sigma_g\) a local diffeomorphism invariant trace on the Kauffman bracket skein module \(K_t(\Sigma _g\times I)\) (here \(t\) is a complex number). This is the Yang-Mills measure on the Kauffman bracket skein module of the surface. The construction is performed first for a surface \(\Sigma _{g,1}\) with one boundary component, by identifying \(\Sigma_{g,1}\times I\) with a handlebody, then embedding the handlebody in a connected sum of \(S^\times S^2\)'s. This yields a map between skein modules the latter skein module being \({\mathbb C}\), and the Yang-Mills measure being this map. For a surface without boundary, one can remove a small disk and then apply this functional to the surface with boundary. There is a small technicality; in order to make this definition consistent, one has to add a skein around the boundary (i.e., a skein in the annulus). The consistency condition makes this skein unique (up to multiplication by a constant). This skein involves an infinite sum of diagrams, so it has to be interpreted as a distribution. As such, the Yang-Mills functional is computed as a limit. The authors show that this limit converges, provided that \(|t|\neq 1\). For the case of the \(4r\)th roots of unites, which is important because of topological quantum field theoretic considerations, the authors factor the skein module by the \((r-1)\)th root of unity, and the Yang-Mills measure can again be defined. The ``classical'' case \(t=-1\) is also discussed, and it is shown that the Yang-Mills measure coincides with the symplectic measure on the moduli space of flat \(\text{SL}(2,{\mathbb C})\)-connections on the surface. The proof is based on Witten's formula for the symplectic measure.