The \(\operatorname{SU}(2)\)-character variety of the closed surface of genus 2 (Q684211)

This paper studies the symplectic geometry of the moduli space \(\mathcal{M}= \mathrm{Hom}\left( \pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) ,\operatorname{SU}\left( 2\right) \right) /\operatorname{SU}\left( 2\right) \) of conjugacy classes of representations of the fundamental group \(\pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) \) into the compact Lie group \(K:=\operatorname{SU}\left( 2\right) \), where \(\Sigma \) is the compact oriented surface of genus \(2\). A distinguished dense open subset of \(\mathcal{M}\) is given by the collection \(\mathcal{M}^{i}\) of conjugacy classes \(\left[ \rho \right] \) of irreducible representations \(\rho \in \mathrm{Hom}\left( \pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) ,\operatorname{SU}\left( 2\right) \right) \). The standard symplectic structure on \(\mathcal{M}^{i}\) is given at each \(\left[ \rho \right] \in \mathcal{M}^{i}\) by the alternating 2-form \(\omega \) on the cohomology group \(H^{1}\left( \pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) ,\mathfrak{k}\right) \) determined by the Poincaré duality and the Killing form on \(\mathfrak{k}\equiv \mathfrak{su}\left( 2\right) \), where \(\mathfrak{k}\) carries the \(\pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) \)-module structure defined by \(\mathrm{Ad}_{\rho \left( \cdot \right) }:\pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) \rightarrow \mathrm{Aut} \left( \mathfrak{k}\right) \) and \(H^{1}\left( \pi _{1}\left( \Sigma \right) , \mathfrak{k}\right) \) is canonically identified as the tangent space to \( \mathcal{M}^{i}\) at \(\left[ \rho \right] \). Analyzing the moment map associated with the Hamiltonian \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-action on an open set \(\mathcal{M}^{\circ }\subsetneqq \mathcal{M}^{i}\) arising from the Goldman flow on \(\mathcal{M}\), the authors show that \( \mathcal{M}^{\circ }\) is dense in \(\mathcal{M}^{i}\) and by modding out the isotropy group, there is a free Hamiltonian \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-action on \( \mathcal{M}^{\circ }\), and more explicitly, \(\mathcal{M}^{\circ }\cong \Delta ^{\circ }\times \mathbb{T}^{3}\) as a trivial \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-bundle over an open \(3\)-simplex \(\Delta ^{\circ }\). By a similar analysis of the moment map associated with the standard Hamiltonian \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-action on the complex and hence symplectic manifold \(\mathbb{P}^{3}\left( \mathbb{C} \right) \), it is pointed out that this \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-action is also free on a dense open subset of \(\mathbb{P}^{3}\left( \mathbb{C}\right) \). As a consequence, the authors conclude that the dense open set \(\mathcal{M} ^{\circ }\) of \(\mathcal{M}^{i}\) can be identified symplectically with a dense open subset of \(\mathbb{P}^{3}\left( \mathbb{C}\right) \). It is also shown that, up to a choice of a global section of the trivial bundle \(\mathcal{M}^{\circ }\rightarrow \Delta ^{\circ }\), there is a unique anti-symplectic involution on \(\mathcal{M}^{\circ }\) that is compatible with the Hamiltonian \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-action, i.e., preserving the Hamiltonian function \(\mu _{\xi }\) for all \(\xi \in \mathfrak{t}^{3}\). On the other hand, an anti-symplectic involution \(\sigma \) not compatible with the Hamiltonian \(\mathbb{T}^{3}\)-action is explicitly given and shown to have its fixed point set homeomorphic to \(\mathbb{P} ^{3}\left( \mathbb{R}\right) \).