Connected components of spaces of representations of non-orientable surfaces (Q614513)

The purpose of this article is to show that the space of representations of the fundamental group of a compact non-orientable surface into \(PSL(2,\mathbb R)\) has exactly two connected components. The group \(PSL(2,\mathbb R)\) is the group of orientation-preserving isometries of the hyperbolic plane. The problem of determining the number of connected components of the space of representations \(\Hom(\pi_1(M), G)\) has been solved for compact closed orientable surfaces \(M\) for many connected semisimple Lie groups \(G\) including \(PSL(2, \mathbb Z)\). The main tool to study this problem is the study of a map \(o_2: \pi_0(\Hom(\pi_1(M), G)) \longrightarrow H^2(M, \pi_1(G))\), which arises from the obstruction to lift a representation to the universal covering of the group \(G\). Similar tools as in the orientable case are used. The main purpose of the paper is to show: Theorem 1.1. Let \(M\) be a closed non-orientable surface of genus \(k\) with \(k\geq 3\). Then the map \[ o_2: \pi_0(\Hom(\pi_1(M), PSL(2,\mathbb Z))) \to \mathbb Z_2 \] given by the obstruction class is a bijection. In order to show Theorem 1.1, the author proves a version of the theorem above for the case where the surface has boundary. In the introduction, a short and clear survey of the problem is given.