Quaternionic hyperbolic Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates (Q1736084)

This paper deals with spaces of representations of discrete groups in \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\), the group of isometries of the quaternionic hyperbolic plane. In particular it considers the space of representations of the free group on two generators and of surface groups. There are several types of hyperbolic elements in \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\), according to the number of real eigenvalues. An element is called loxodromic if it has no real (similarity classes of) eigenvalues. Notice that as the ring of the quaternions is not commutative, eigenvalues in \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\) are not well defined, but their similarity or conjugacy class is. The first result of the paper is a precise description of the variety of irreducible representations, up to conjugation, of a free group on two generators in \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\) such that the image of both generators is loxodromic. It is shown to have dimension 21, which is precisely the dimension of \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\). Other situations where the generators are mapped to other kinds of hyperbolic isometries are briefly discussed, in particular their dimensions are strictly less. Then this result is applied to a study of the space of geometric representations of closed orientable surface groups in \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\), where geometric means that the image of curves in a pants decomposition is loxodromic and the restriction to each pair of pants is irreducible. This space has dimension minus the Euler characteristic of the surface times the dimension of \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\). Representations in the groups of isometries of 5- and 4-dimensional hyperbolic spaces are discussed. The authors introduce the so called projective points of an isometry in \(\mathrm{Sp}(2,1)\), that are used in the classification.