Tangles, relative character varieties, and holonomy perturbed traceless flat moduli spaces (Q6165128)

The paper interprets flat moduli of \(SU(2)\) gauge theory as character varieties, i.e. representations of the pointed fundamental group in \(SU(2)\). With this interpretation, some results that typically require the technical apparatus of Hodge theory and symplectic reduction are reproved using more elementary means: basic algebraic topology, Poincaré duality and composition in the Weinstein category. Some novel results are also proved by extending the arguments from the flat to the holonomy-perturbed flat case interpreted algebraically in terms of Lagrangian immersions. Consider a tangle \(\mathcal{L}\) (properly embedded compact \(1\)-submanifold) in a compact oriented \(3\)-manifold \(X\). In the language of gauge theory, one defines two moduli spaces: \(\mathcal{M}(X,\mathcal{L})\) of flat connections on \(X\backslash\mathcal{L}\) with traceless holonomy on small meridians of \(\mathcal{L}\); and \(\mathcal{M}(\partial X,\partial\mathcal{L})\) with traceless holonomy around the marked points of \(\partial\mathcal{L}\). The smooth top stratum of \(\mathcal{M}(X,\mathcal{L})\) carries the Atiyah-Bott-Goldman symplectic form, and the restriction to the boundary induces a natural map \(r:\mathcal{M}(X,\mathcal{L})\to\mathcal{M}(\partial X,\partial\mathcal{L})\). It is known that when \(A\in\mathcal{M}(X,\mathcal{L})\) is regular there is a neighborhood \(U\) of \(A\) such that \(r|_{U}\) is a Lagrangian immersion. The authors give an elementary new proof and extend the result to the holonomy-perturbed moduli \(\mathcal{M}_\pi(X,\mathcal{L})\) defined by a similar construction with perturbation data \(\pi\) that modifies the flatness condition on a finite disjoint union of solid tori in the interior of \(X\backslash\mathcal{L}\). As another application, they prove a gauge-theoretic version of the fact that a torus is isomorphic to its own Jacobian, namely, that the \(4\)-punctured \(2\)-sphere is its own traceless \(SU(2)\) moduli space. The flat moduli spaces are identified with the character varieties using holonomy. Instead of Weil's identification of Zariski tangent spaces of a character variety with cohomology, symplectic reduction and Poincaré-Lefschetz duality, the authors only use Poincaré duality with local coefficients. In the perturbed case, the immersion \(r|_{U}\) depends on \(\pi\), and for general choices of \(\pi\) the topology of \(\mathcal{M}_\pi(X,\mathcal{L})\) may also vary. The Atiyah-Floer conjecture in Floer field theory asserts that the resulting immersions are, nevertheless, isomorphic in some Fukaya category. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1515.57005].