Deformations of reducible \(\operatorname{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})\) representations of fibered 3-manifold groups (Q2159499)

The author shows that certain reducible representations of fundamental groups of 3-manifolds \(M_{\phi}\) which fiber over the circle with monodromy \(\phi\) into \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})\), composed with the irreducible representation \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})\to \mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})\), can be deformed to irreducible representations by a direct calculation of the deformation space using coordinates for \(\mathfrak{sl}(n,\mathbb{C})\). He shows in particular that under certain conditions on the eigenvalues of \(\phi^*\), the reducible representation is contained in an \((n + 1 + k)(n-1)\)-dimensional component of the representation variety, where \(k\) is the number of components of \(\partial M_{\phi}\). The result applies to mapping tori of pseudo-Anosov maps with orientable invariant foliations whenever 1 is not an eigenvalue of the induced map on homology, where the reducible representation is also a limit of irreducible representations. The result also applies to the cases where \(M_{\phi}\) is the complement of a fibered link with \(k\geq 2\) components or a \(k\) cusped fibered manifold which is not a link complement.