Representation varieties detect essential surfaces

DOI10.4310/MRL.2018.V25.N3.A4MaRDI QIDQ1990439zbMATH OpenWikidataFDO

Authors Stefan Friedl, Takahiro Kitayama, Matthias Nagel

Publication date 25 October 2018

Published in Mathematical Research Letters (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00584

zbMATH Keywords

\(3\)-manifoldBruhat-Tits buildingcharacter varietyessential surfaceseparable subgroup

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Groups with a (BN)-pair; buildings (20E42) Fundamental group, presentations, free differential calculus (57M05)

Abstract: Extending Culler-Shalen theory, Hara and the second author presented a way to construct certain kinds of branched surfaces in a $3$-manifold from an ideal point of a curve in the $operatorname{SL}_n$-character variety. There exists an essential surface in some $3$-manifold known to be not detected in the classical $operatorname{SL}_2$-theory. We prove that every connected essential surface in a $3$-manifold is given by an ideal point of a rational curve in the $operatorname{SL}_n$-character variety for some $n$.

Review text

A classical work of \textit{M. Culler} and \textit{P. B. Shalen} [Ann. Math. (2) 117, 109--146 (1983; Zbl 0529.57005)] provides a method to construct an essential surface in a \(3\)-manifold from an ideal point in a rational curve in its \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{C})\) character variety. However it is known that in general, not every essential surface arises that way. \textit{T. Hara} and \textit{T. Kitayama} extended Culler-Shalen's theory for \(\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{C})\) character varieties [``Character varieties of higher dimensional representations and splittings of 3-manifolds, Preprint, \url{arXiv:1410.4295}] for arbitrary \(n\). Given an ideal point in a curve of the \(\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{C})\) character variety of a \(3\)-manifold, they constructed an essential tri-branched surface which might be an essential surface. The main result of the present paper is that every essential surface of a given \(3\)-manifold can be constructed from such an ideal point in a curve of its \(\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{C})\) character variety for some positive integer \(n\). The proof is based on a theorem of \textit{P. Przytycki} and \textit{D. T. Wise} [Compos. Math. 150, No. 9, 1623--1630 (2014; Zbl 1305.57039)] which states that the fundamental group of an essential surface is separable in the fundamental group of the \(3\)-manifold.

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Cited in

(10)

• Closed surfaces and character varieties
• Character varieties of higher dimensional representations and splittings of 3-manifolds
• Torsion function on character varieties
• Detecting essential surfaces as intersections in the character variety
• Reidemeister torsion form on character varieties
• Conway spheres as ideal points of the character variety
• Ideal points of character varieties, algebraic non-integral representations, and undetected closed essential surfaces in 3–manifolds
• Detection of essential surfaces in 3-manifolds with SL₂-trees
• Essential tori in 3-manifolds not detected in any characteristic
• Triangular decomposition of character varieties

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