A note on nilpotent representations (Q905404)

Let \(\Gamma\) be a finitely generated nilpotent group and let \(G\) be a complex reductive algebraic group. The space \(\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)\) is an affine algebraic set and a complex variety admitting an Hausdorff topology. In this paper, the topology of the connected components of \(\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)\) is investigated by studying the embedding \(\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma/\Gamma_{(i)},G) \rightarrow \mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)\), where \(\Gamma_{(i)}\) is the \(i\)-th term of the lower central series of \(\Gamma\). While some results proved in the paper indicate many similarities between representation spaces of abelian and non-abelian nilpotent groups, the latter have a much richer topology than the former (\(\mathrm{Hom}(\mathbb{Z}^{r},\mathrm{SL}_{n}\mathbb{C})\), (\(\mathrm{Hom}(\mathbb{Z}^{r},\mathrm{Sp}_{2n}\mathbb{C})\) and the corresponding character varieties are connected for all values of \(r\) and \(n\)). For instance, the following result is proved (Theorem 1.5): Let \(G\) be the group of complex points of a (possibly disconnected) reductive algebraic group. If \(\Gamma\) is a finitely generated nilpotent group which surjects onto a finite non-abelian subgroup of \(G\), then \(\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)\) and \(\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)/\!\!/G\) are both disconnected topological spaces.