Symplectic resolutions of character varieties (Q6043678)

Character varieties associated to the fundamental group of topological spaces have been extensively studied by topologists, group theorists and algebraic geometers. The character varieties of reductive groups associated to the fundamental group of a Riemann surface play a particularly prominent role in this theory since their smooth locus carries a natural symplectic structure, which is complex algebraic, and, in particular, holomorphic. G. Bellamy and T. Schedler study how this symplectic structure degenerates along the singular locus of the character variety. That is, the authors consider the connected component of the identity of \(G\)-character varieties of compact Riemann surfaces of genus \(g > 0\) for connected complex reductive groups \(G\) of type \(A\), e.g., \(\mathrm{SL}_n\) and \(\mathrm{GL}_n\). They show that these varieties are \(\mathbb{Q}\)-factorial symplectic singularities and classify which admit symplectic resolutions. The classification reduces to the semisimple case, where the authors show that a resolution exists if and only if either \(g=1\) and \(G\) is a product of special linear groups of any rank and copies of the group \(\mathrm{PGL}_2\), or if \(g=2\) and \(G = (\mathrm{SL}_2)^m\) for some \(m\).