Bad irreducible subgroups and singular locus for character varieties in PSL(p, C)
Let $G$ be a complex reductive group (for example, $\mathrm{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})$, $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ or $\mathrm{PSL}(n,\mathbb{C})\text{).}$ A subgroup $P$ of $G$ is parabolic if $G/P$ is a complete variety, and a subgroup $H$ of $G$ is called irreducible if it is not contained in a proper parabolic subgroup of $G$ (this is different from the common meaning of an irreducible subgroup in a linear group if $G \neq\mathrm{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ or $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ ). The author defines an irreducible subgroup $H$ of $G$ to be bad if its centralizer $Z_{G}(H)$ in $G$ is strictly larger than the centre $Z(G)$ of $G$. If $H$ is both irreducible and completely reducible, then it is known that $Z_{G}(H)$ is always a finite extension of $Z(G)$ (see [\textit{A. S. Sikora}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 364, No. 10, 5173--5208 (2012; Zbl 1291.14022)]). \par Now let $p$ be a prime, put $G =\mathrm{PSL}(p,\mathbb{C})$ (so $Z(G) =1$) and let $\Gamma$ be a finitely generated group. Consider the set $\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)$ of representations of $\Gamma$ into $G$. A representation $\rho :\Gamma \rightarrow G\ $ is called irreducible (bad, etc) if $\rho (\Gamma)$ has this property. If $\Gamma$ is generated by $r$ elements then $\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)$ is an affine algebraic subset of $G^{r}$ and the set $\mathrm{Hom}^{i}(\Gamma,G)$ of irreducible representations is open in $\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)$. Denote the set $\mathrm{Hom}^{i}(\Gamma,G)/(G/Z(G))$ of conjugacy classes of irreducible representations by $\chi^{i}(\Gamma,G)$. The singular locus $\chi_{\mathrm{Sing}}^{i}(\Gamma,G)$ of the character variety of $\Gamma$ into $G$ is the set of conjugacy classes of bad representations. \par The author investigates properties of this singular locus. Many properties are quite technical but the following gives some of the flavour of the results. If $\overline{H}$ is a bad subgroup of $G$ then $Z_{G}(\overline{H})$ is elementary abelian or order $p^{2}$ or $p$ and in each case $\overline{H}$ can be described precisely (Theorem 1). Theorem 3 gives a topological description of $\chi_{\mathrm{Sing}}^{i}(\Gamma,G)$ and as a consequence it is shown that if $r =\dim_{Z/p}(\Gamma^{ab}/p\Gamma^{ab})$ is the $p\text{-rank of }\Gamma$ then there are exactly $(p^{r} -1)(p^{r -1} -1)/(p^{2} -1)$ conjugacy classes of abelian irreducible representations of $\Gamma$ into $G$.
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