Special elliptic isometries, relative \(\mathrm{SU}(2,1)\)-character varieties, and bendings (Q2048285)

The group of holomorphic isometries in the complex hyperbolic \(2\)-space \(\mathbb{H}^2_{\mathbb{C}}\) is the projective unitary group \(PU(2,1)\), and there are three kinds of isometries -- elliptic, parabolic, loxodromic. If the isometry has a fixed point in \(\mathbb{H}^2_{\mathbb{C}}\), exactly one fixed point on \(\partial \mathbb{H}^2_{\mathbb{C}}\), or exactly two fixed points on \(\partial \mathbb{H}^2_{\mathbb{C}}\), it is called elliptic, parabolic or loxodromic, respectively. It is known that an elliptic isometry has three eigenvalues and if its eigenvectors have pairwise distinct eigenvalues, it is called regular elliptic, otherwise it is called special elliptic. The paper under review focuses on special elliptic isometries. A nontrivial special elliptic isometry is determined by a point \(p\) and a complex number \(\alpha\) (not a cube root of unity) at \(SU(2,1)\) level, so a relation between special elliptic isometries can be written \(R^{p_n}_{\alpha_{n}}\cdot\cdot\cdot R^{p_2}_{\alpha_{2}}R^{p_1}_{\alpha_{1}}=\delta\) (where \(\delta\) is a cube root of unity), and we say this relation has length \(n\). The main result of the paper is full classification of length \(2\), \(3\), and \(4\) special elliptic isometries. The authors also study some \(SU(2,1)\)-character varieties (Theorem 5.9) and the special elliptic \(5\)-gon (pentagon) in the last chapter.