Parabolic bundles and representations of the fundamental group (Q1592848)

Given a smooth complex projective variety \(X\) and an irreducible divisor \(D\) of \(X\) with normal crossing singularities, it is important to relate the fundamental groups of \(X\) and \(X-D\) and to get information about their representations. Using the non-existence of certain stable parabolic bundles the authors show that under the assumption that the Néron-Severi group \(NS(X)\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{Z}\), the group \(\pi_1(X-D)\) does not have irreducible \(U(r)\) representations, if the group \(\pi_1(X)\) does not have irreducible \(PU(r)\) representation, where for the rank \(r\) one also has to assume \(1<r\leq 3\). Under these assumptions they show as an important corollary that, if \(\rho\) is an irreducible unitary representation of \(\pi_1(X-D)\) and \(\lambda\) is an element going once around \(D\), then \(\rho(\lambda)\) is just a multiple of the identity. Under the further assumption that the divisor \(D\) is smooth and the tangent bundle of \(X\) is generated by global sections the authors obtain a similar result for the group \(GL(2)\). The smoothness condition is necessary here, because the correspondence between representations and Higgs bundles is up to now only known under this stronger condition.