Triangulation independent Ptolemy varieties (Q1650200)

The Ptolemy variety \(P_n({\mathcal T})\) of a topological ideal triangulation of a compact \(3\)-manifold \(M\) gives coordinates (called Ptolemy coordinates) for boundary-unipotent SL\((n,\mathbb{C})\)-representations of \(\pi_1(M)\) in the sense that each point in \(P_n({\mathcal T})\) determines a representation up to conjugation. This variety is closely related to Thurston's gluing equation variety and is explicitly computable for many census manifolds when \(n=2\) or \(3\). Invariants such as volume and Chern-Simons invariants can be explicitly computed from the Ptolemy coordinates. However, the Ptolemy variety depends on the triangulation and may miss several components of representations. In this paper, the authors focus on the case when \(n=2\). They define a refined Ptolemy variety which is a topological invariant of \(M\) and which is guaranteed to detect all irreducible boundary-unipotent SL\((2,\mathbb{C})\)-representations. They also define refined variants of the Ptolemy variety for PSL\((2,\mathbb{C})\)-representations, and representations that are not necessarily boundary-unipotent. In particular, the authors give an algorithm to compute all irreducible SL\((2,\mathbb{C})\)-characters as well as the full \(A\)-polynomial.