Arithmetic geometry of character varieties with regular monodromy (Q6959746)

Character varieties play a central role in non-abelian Hodge theory and the geometric Langlands program. Hausel, Letellier and Rodriguez-Villegas counted points on character varieties associated to punctured surface groups and GL\(_n\). The authors of the present paper study character varieties associated with arbitrary reductive groups, assuming existence of regular semisimple and regular unipotent monodromies. They count points on these varieties over \(\mathbb{F}_q\) and show that the point count is given by a polynomial in \(q\). This polynomial, known as the ``E-polynomial'' of the character variety, encodes significant information, including the number of connected components and the Euler characteristic. The authors give an example of a cohomologically rigid representation which is not physically rigid.