A new identity for \(\text{SL}(2,\mathbf{C})\)-characters of the once punctured torus group (Q2347757)

The original McShane identity is the following; \[ \sum_{\gamma}\frac{1}{1+e^{l(\gamma)}}=\frac{1}{2}, \] where the sum is over all simple closed geodesics in a once punctured torus with \(l(\gamma)\) the length of \(\gamma\). After Greg McShane first proved this identity in 1991, it has been generalized in many different cases by many authors. Among them, Brian Bowditch gave an alternative proof of the original McShane identity using Markoff triples and extended it to type-preserving representations of the once punctured torus group into \(SL(2,\mathbb{C})\) satisfying the so-called Bowditch conditions. See the references [\textit{B. H. Bowditch}, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 28, No. 1, 73--78 (1996; Zbl 0854.57009)] and [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 77, No. 3, 697--736 (1998; Zbl 0928.11030)] in the paper. The main result of the paper under review is that the authors obtain a new identity for general irreducible representations of the once punctured torus group into \(SL(2,\mathbb{C})\) satisfying the Bowditch condition. In addition, they obtain a variation of the identity when the representation is fixed (up to conjugation) by an Anosov mapping class satisfying the relative Bowditch condition.