Quantum representations and monodromies of fibered links (Q2001587)

The authors consider the finite-dimensional projective representations of mapping class groups of surfaces (possibly with boundary) provided by the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev Topological Quantum Field Theory associated to $SO(3)$. Andersen, Masbaum and Ueno conjectured that these representations should send pseudo-Anosov mapping classes to elements of infinite order, for large enough level $r$, and proved it for the case of the four-holed sphere ([\textit{J. E. Andersen} et al., Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 141, No. 3, 477--488 (2006; Zbl 1110.57009)]). In the present paper, this AMU conjecture is related to the growth of the $SO(3)$-Turaev-Viro invariants of hyperbolic 3-manifolds: ``We show that if the $r$-growth of these invariants for a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ that fibers over the circle is exponential then the monodromy of the fibration of $M$ satisfies the AMU conjecture''. The authors construct then large classes of hyperbolic fibered links of arbitrary high genus whose $SO(3)$-Turaev-Viro invariants have exponential $r$-growth; as a consequence, they obtain infinite families of non-conjugate pseudo-Anosov mapping classes of surfaces of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components that satisfy the AMU conjecture, for all $g > n \ge 2$. ``We also discuss integrality properties of the traces of quantum representations and we answer a question of \textit{Q. Chen} and \textit{T. Yang} about Turaev-Viro invariants of torus links'' [Quantum Topol. 9, No. 3, 419--460 (2018; Zbl 1405.57020)].