Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates for maximal representations (Q2349865)

The author studies maximal representations of surface groups into Lie groups. Let \(\Gamma _{g,m}\) be the fundamental group of an oriented surface \(\Sigma _{g,m}\) of genus \(g\) with \(m\geq 1\) boundary components. One defines the Toledo invariant \(T_{\rho }\) for a representation \(\rho \) of \(\Gamma _{g,m}\) into a Hermitian Lie group \(G\) of non-compact type. The Toledo invariant \(T_{\rho }\) satisfies the Milnor-Wood inequality \[ |T_{\rho }|\leq |\chi (\Sigma _{g,m})| \text{rank}(D), \] where \(D\) is the bounded symmetric domain associatd with \(G\). The representation \(\rho \) is said to be maximal if its Toledo invariant is maximal: \(T_{\rho }=|\chi (\Gamma _{g,m}) |\text{rank}(D)\). In case \(G=\mathrm{Sp}(2n,{\mathbb R})\) the author gives a matricial description of the representation space \(\text{Rep}_{\max}\bigl(\Gamma _{0,3},\mathrm{Sp}(2n,{\mathbb R})\bigr)\). To a maximal representation is associated a triple of matrices in \(\mathrm{GL}(n,{\mathbb R})\) whose conjugacy classes can be seen as generalized length parameters. Furthermore it is proven that the representation space \(\text{Rep}_{\max}\bigl(\Gamma _{g,m},\mathrm{Sp}(2n,{\mathbb R})\bigr)\) has \(2^{2g+m-1}\) connected components.