Trivalent graphs, volume conjectures and character varieties (Q471605)

In [Mod. Phys. Lett. A 10, No. 19, 1409--1418 (1995; Zbl 1022.81574)], \textit{R. M. Kashaev} defined a family of complex-valued link invariants indexed by integers \(N \geq 2\) and after verifying it for the three simplest hyperbolic knots, he conjectured that for any hyperbolic knot the invariant grows as \(\exp(\text{Vol}(K)N/2\pi\)) when \(N\) goes to infinity, where \(\text{Vol}(K)\) denotes the volume of the complement of the knot. \textit{H. Murakami} and \textit{J. Murakami} [Acta Math. 186, No. 1, 85--104 (2001; Zbl 0983.57009)] showed that Kashaev's invariant with parameter \(N\) coincides with the colored Jones polynomial, in a certain normalization, with every color the \(N\)-dimensional representation evaluated at the primitive \(N\)th root of unity. For incomplete hyperbolic structures, \textit{S. Gukov} [Commun. Math. Phys. 255, No. 3, 577--627 (2005; Zbl 1115.57009)] defined a generalized volume \(\text{Vol}(l,m)\) and a generalized Chern-Simons invariant \(\text{CS}(l,m)\), and formulated the generalized volume conjecture that relates the growth of the \(N\)-colored Jones polynomial to \(\text{Vol}(l,m)\) and \(\text{CS}(l,m)\). A closed one-dimensional cell complex \(\Gamma\) where three edges meet at each vertex is called a trivalent graph. Therefore, the number \(E\) of edges and that \(V\) of vertices are related by \(2E=3V\). For a planar trivalent graph, the boundary of the tubular neighborhood of the graph \(\Gamma\) is no longer a torus but a Riemann surface \(M\) of genus \(g=E/3+1\), since \(2E=3V\), \(V-E+F=2\), and \(F=g+1\). A Lagrangian subvariety of the Hitchin moduli space over \(M\) is the \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb C)\) character variety of the fundamental group of the complement of a trivalent graph \(\Gamma\) with \(E\) edges in \(S^3\). In this paper, the authors extend the generalized volume conjecture and the quantum volume conjecture to \(U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)\) colored quantum invariants of the theta and tetrahedron graph. They conjecture that the configuration of the character variety is locally determined by large color asymptotes of the quantum invariants of the trivalent graph in terms of complex Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates. Finally, the authors show that the quantization of the character variety is provided by the \(q\)-holonomic difference equation of the quantum invariants.