Character varieties of higher dimensional representations and splittings of 3-manifolds (Q2039281)

Recently there have been many interesting results in low dimensional topology derived from higher dimensional representations of surface groups and \(3\)-manifold groups. In this article, the authors attempt to extend Culler and Shalen's theory for higher dimensional representations of \(3\)-manifold groups. \textit{M. Culler} and \textit{P. B. Shalen} [Ann. Math. (2) 117, 109--146 (1983; Zbl 0529.57005)] established a way to construct essential surfaces in a \(3\)-manifold from ideal points of the \(SL_2\)-character variety associated to the \(3\)-manifold group. In this paper, the authors present an analogous construction of certain kinds of branched surfaces, which they call essential tribranched surfaces, from ideal points of the \(SL_n\)-character variety for a natural number \(n\geq 3\).