Poincaré series of character varieties for nilpotent groups (Q2414563)

Let \(G\) be a compact connected Lie group and \(\Gamma\) be a finitely generated discrete group. The purpose of this paper is to study the representation space \(\mathrm{Rep}(\Gamma,G)=\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)/G\) where \(G\) acts on \(\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)\) by conjugation. In this case, this space coincides with the character variety \(\mathfrak{X}_{G}(\Gamma)\). In this work, the author obtains the rational cohomology of \(\mathrm{Rep}(\Gamma,G)\) and calculates the Poincaré series for these in the case when \(\Gamma\) is a nilpotent group. The author provides specific examples for a finitely generated free abelian group. In order to achieve the above, the author studies the homotopy type of related spaces arising from certain filtrations. More specifically, let \(F_{n}\) be the free group on \(n\)-generators and take its \textit{descending central series}: \[ \cdots \Gamma^{3}\unlhd \Gamma^{2}\unlhd \Gamma^{1}=F_{n}. \] This gives the filtration \[ \mathrm{Hom}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{2},G)\subseteq\mathrm{Hom}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{3},G)\subseteq\cdots \subseteq G^{n}. \] Let \(J(G)\) be the James reduced product on \(G\), the above may be used to obtain a filtration of \(J(G)\): \[ X(2,G)\subseteq X(3,G)\subseteq \cdots \subseteq J(G). \] There is a natural action of \(G\), by conjugation on \(\mathrm{Hom}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{q}, G)\) and by product on the words of \(X(q,G)\). The first splitting theorem is the following: \textbf{Theorem 1.1.}: Let \(G\) be compact connected Lie group. Then there is a homotopy equivalence \[ \Sigma (X(q,G)/G) \simeq \Sigma \bigvee_{n\geq 1} \widehat{\mathrm{Hom}}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{q},G)/G\text{ for all } q\geq 2. \] In the above, \(\widehat{\mathrm{Hom}}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{q},G)\) is the quotient of the space of homomorphisms \(\mathrm{Hom}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{q},G)\) by the subspace of those \(n\)-tuples with at least one coordinate equals the identity. Let \(\mathrm{Comm}(G)\) denote the space \(X(2,G)\), and \(\mathrm{Comm}(G)_{1}\) denote the component of the trivial representation. The following follows from the theorem above: \textbf{Theorem 1.2.}: Let \(G\) be as above, \(T\) be its maximal torus and \(W\) the corresponding Weyl group. Then, there is a homeomorphism \(Comm(G)_{1}\cong J(T)/W\), and a homotopy equivalence \[ \Sigma (Comm(G)_{1}/G)\simeq \Sigma \bigvee_{n\geq 1} (\widehat{T}^{n}/ W), \] where \(\widehat{T}^{n}\) is the \(n\)-folded smash product of \(T\). As a corollary, the author obtains the following Poincaré series results: \textbf{Theorem 1.4.}: Let \(G\), \(T\) and \(W\) be as above. Then the Poincaré series of \(\mathrm{Rep}(\mathbb{Z}^{n},G)_{1}\) is given by \[ P(\mathrm{Rep}(\mathbb{Z}^{n},G)_{1};s)=\frac{1}{|W|}\sum_{v\in W} \det(1+sw)^{n} \] and \(P(\mathrm{Rep}(F_{n}/\Gamma^{q},G)_{1};s)=P(\mathrm{Rep}(\mathbb{Z}^{n},G)_{1};s)\) for all \(q\geq 2\).