Integral topological quantum field theory for a one-holed torus (Q650125)

An \(\text{SO}(3)\) Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT associates, to a compact oriented surface \(\Sigma\) and to a natural number \(p\), a finite-dimensional vector space \(V_p(\Sigma)\) over a cyclotomic field \(\mathbb Q(\zeta_p)\) where \(\zeta_p\) is a primitive \(p\)th root of unity. When \(p\) is an odd prime, Gilmer refined this TQFT to a functor \({\mathcal S}^+_p\) which associates to \((\Sigma, p)\) a free lattice \({\mathcal S}^+_p(\Sigma)\) over \(\mathbb Z(\zeta_p)\) which is contained in \(V_p(\Sigma)\) [\textit{P. M. Gilmer}, ``Integrality for TQFTs'', Duke Math. J. 125, No. 2, 389--413 (2004; Zbl 1107.57020)]. There is a representation \(\rho_p\) of a certain central extention of the mapping class group of \(\Sigma\) on \({\mathcal S}^+_p(\Sigma)\). For every \(N\geq 0\), the representation \(\rho_p\) induces a representation \(\rho_{p,N}\) on \({\mathcal S}^+_p(\Sigma)/h^{N+1}{\mathcal S}^+_p(\Sigma)\), where \(h=1-\zeta_p\). The sequence of representations \(\rho_{p,N}\) may be thought of as an `\(h\)-adic expansion' of \(\rho_p\) at \(p\)th root of unity, and is complete in the sense that if a mapping class is detected by \(\rho_p\) then it is detected by \(\rho_{p,N}\) for large enough \(N\). Representations \(\rho_{p,N}\) are clearly interesting to compute, because they give accessible quantum topological information about mapping class groups. This paper represents one of the first explicit computations in integral TQFT. It computes \(\rho_{p,N}\) for the genus one surface with one boundary component. The formulas give partial information for higher genus as well. To make explicit computations in integral TQFT, one must first choose a `good' basis for \({\mathcal S}^+_p(\Sigma)\). The key technical ingredient in this paper is a modification of the lollipop bases of [\textit{P. M. Gilmer} and \textit{G. Masbaum}, ``Intergral lattices in TQFT'', Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 40, No. 5, 815--844 (2007; Zbl 1178.57023)], for arbitrary genus, to bases that are orthogonal with respect to a certain symmetric bilinear form. In the special case \(N=0\), the representation \(\rho_{p,0}\) is on a finite-dimensional vector space over the finite field \(\mathbb {F}_p\). Section 5 identifies \(\rho_{p,0}\) up to isomorphism by showing that these representations factor through \(\text{SL}(2,\mathbb{F}_p)\) and are, in fact, isomorphic to representations of \(\text{SL}(2,\mathbb{F}_p)\) on the space of homogeneous polynomials over \(\mathbb{F}_p\) of appropriate degree.