The quantum trace as a quantum non-abelianization map
Julien Korinman, Alexandre Quesney

TL;DR
This paper establishes a deep connection between the quantum trace, skein algebras, and character varieties, revealing a non-abelianization map that generalizes and relates to existing structures in quantum topology and geometry.
Contribution
It introduces a novel algebraic non-abelianization map that links skein algebras with character varieties, extending previous classifications and interpretations.
Findings
Classification of irreducible representations at roots of unity
Re-interpretation of the quantum trace as a non-commutative deformation
Induction of a birational morphism for closed surfaces
Abstract
We prove that the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra of a punctured triangulated surface is isomorphic to a skein algebra which is a deformation of the algebra of regular functions of some abelian character variety. We first deduce from this observation a classification of the irreducible representations of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra at odd roots of unity, which generalizes to open surfaces the classification of Bonahon, Liu and Wong. We re-interpret Bonahon and Wong's quantum trace map as a non-commutative deformation of some regular morphism between this abelian character variety and the SL2-character variety. This algebraic morphism shares many resemblance with the non-abelianization map of Gaiotto, Moore, Hollands and Neitzke. When the punctured surface is closed, we prove that this algebraic non-abelianization map induces a birational morphism between a smooth torus and the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAlgebraic structures and combinatorial models · Advanced Combinatorial Mathematics · Advanced Topics in Algebra
The quantum trace as a quantum non-abelianization map
Julien Korinman and Alexandre Quesney
Abstract.
We prove that the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra of a punctured triangulated surface is isomorphic to a skein algebra which is a deformation of the algebra of regular functions of some abelian character variety. We first deduce from this observation a classification of the irreducible representations of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra at odd roots of unity, which generalizes to open surfaces the classification of Bonahon, Liu and Wong. We re-interpret Bonahon and Wong’s quantum trace map as a non-commutative deformation of some regular morphism between this abelian character variety and the -character variety. This algebraic morphism shares many resemblance with the non-abelianization map of Gaiotto, Moore, Hollands and Neitzke. When the punctured surface is closed, we prove that this algebraic non-abelianization map induces a birational morphism between a smooth torus and the relative character variety.
Keywords: Skein algebras, Quantum Teichmüller space, Character varieties, Spectral network.
Mathematics Subject Classification 2000: 14D20, 57M25, 57R56.
1. Introduction
Skein algebras, quantum Teichmüller spaces and character varieties
A punctured surface is a pair , where is a compact oriented surface and is a (possibly empty) finite subset of which intersects non-trivially each boundary component. We write . The set consists of a disjoint union of open arcs which we call boundary arcs.
Warning: In this paper, the punctured surface will be called open if the surface has non empty boundary and closed otherwise. This convention differs from the traditional one, where some authors refer to open surface a punctured surface with closed and (in which case is not closed).
In this paper, we will consider different related objects associated to punctured surfaces, namely the Kauffman-bracket skein algebras, the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras and the character varieties. Let us briefly introduce them.
The Kauffman-bracket skein algebra was introduced by Turaev ([Tur88]) for closed punctured surfaces; it was recently generalized to open surfaces by Lê in [Le18], following Bonahon-Wong [BW11], under the name of stated skein algebra. For a commutative unital ring , an invertible element and a punctured surface , the Kauffman-bracket skein algebra is the free –module generated by isotopy classes of some stated framed links in a cylinder over , modulo some local skein relations derived from . This algebra has deep relations with the character varieties and the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFT) defined in [Wit89, RT91].
When the punctures of can be joined to form a triangulation , one can consider the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra . It was introduced by Bonahon and Wong in [BW11] as a refinement of (an exponential version of) the quantum Teichmüller space defined by Chekhov and Fock in [CF99] (see [Kas98] for a related independent construction). A key tool in the construction of representations of the skein algebra in [BW17, BW19] is the quantum trace map. It is morphism of algebras introduced by Bonahon and Wong in [BW11].
Let be the group or . The character variety of a punctured surface is an affine Poisson variety. It was first introduced by Culler and Shalen in [CS83] for closed surfaces and generalized to open ones in [Kor19b]. When , the character variety is a smooth torus: indeed, its algebra of regular functions is the group algebra so , where is the rank of the free abelian group (see Lemma 2.15). When and the surface is closed, the character variety is singular and its smooth part is a smooth manifold.
For closed punctured surfaces , the character variety is closely related to the moduli space of classes of flat connections on a trivial bundle over , modulo gauge equivalences. More precisely, there is a map which is a bijection when . When , the map is surjective and, writing , the restriction is a bijection (see [Lab14, Mar09, Mar16] for surveys).
The Kauffman-bracket skein algebras and the character varieties are related as follows. When and , the Kauffman-bracket skein algebra has a natural Poisson bracket arising from deformation quantization (see Section ).
For a closed punctured surface and a spin structure on it, there exists an isomorphism of Poisson algebras from the skein algebra at to the Poisson algebra of regular functions of the character variety (see [Bul97, PS00, CM09, Bar99, Tur91]). For (not necessarily closed) triangulated punctured surfaces, there is an isomorphism of Poisson algebras which depends on the choice of an orientation of its boundary arcs and a relative spin structure (see [KQ19]). Note that when the punctured surface is open, the stated skein algebra at is not commutative; this explains our choice of parameter rather the more traditional one .
In TQFT, skein algebras appear through their non-trivial finite dimensional representations. Skein algebras admit such representations if and only if the parameter is a root of unity. One motivation for the construction of the quantum trace map is that the representation category of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is easier to study than the representation category of skein algebras. In [BL07, BW17] it is shown that the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras at root of unity of closed surfaces are semi-simple and their simple modules are classified. For an irreducible representation of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra, one obtains a representation of skein algebras by composition:
[TABLE]
Such a representation is called quantum Teichmüller representation. When is a root of unity of odd order , there exists an injective morphism
[TABLE]
whose image lies in the center of the skein algebra . This was proved in [BW16] for closed surfaces and generalized in [KQ19] for open surfaces as well. A quantum Teichmüller representation sends an element of the image of to a scalar operator, hence it induces a character on the commutative algebra and thus a point . The latter is called the non abelian classical shadow of and it only depends on the isomorphism class of . It was proved in [FKL19] that, when is closed, ”generic” irreducible representations of are quantum Teichmüller representations.
To a triangulated punctured surface one can associate a -fold covering with one branching point per triangle (see Section ). Let us denote by its covering involution. In [GMN12, GMN13, GMN14, HN13], the authors considered the moduli space of gauge classes of flat connections whose holonomy along a curve is the inverse of the holonomy along . They also considered a moduli space of gauge classes of flat connections equipped with some additional decoration (called a framing). The main result in [HN13], inspired by [GMN12, GMN13, GMN14] and the classical work of Hitchin in [Hit87], is the construction of a bijection , called non-abelianization map, between the two moduli spaces.
Since the Kauffman-bracket skein algebra is a deformation of the Poisson algebra of regular functions of the character variety which is closely related to the moduli space of flat connections , it is natural to conjecture that the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is a deformation of some character variety itself related to the moduli space . It is also natural to expect that the quantum trace is a deformation of some algebraic non-abelianization map related to the construction in [GMN13, HN13]. The purpose of this paper is to provide such a construction and study some consequences.
The authors were recently informed by Allegretti and Kim that the relation between the quantum trace and the non-abelianization map was first emphasized by Gabella in [Gab17] (see also [HKM18]) though our treatment and resulting theorems are quite different.
Main results of the paper
Let be the –fold branched covering associated to a punctured triangulated surface . We show that the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra can be interpreted as an equivariant skein algebra of , that we denote by . On the other hand, we introduce the equivariant character variety . It is a Poisson affine variety; its set of closed points is in bijection with the moduli space of [HN13]. We show that provides a deformation of . The relation with the Chekhov-Fock algebra is the following.
Theorem 1.1**.**
For each leaf labeling of (see Section ), there is an isomorphism of algebras:
[TABLE]
In Section , we show that if is a root of unity of odd order , then the skein algebra is semi-simple; we provide tools to classify its irreducible representations and compute their dimensions. Using Theorem 1.1, we deduce a classification of the irreducible representations of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras. More precisely, we show that there is a central inclusion . Therefore, each irreducible representation of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra induces a point in ; we call it its abelian classical shadow. To each inner puncture of we associate some curves in and to each boundary component of we associate some arcs in . The following theorem was established by Bonahon and Wong in [BW17] for closed punctured surfaces.
Theorem 1.2**.**
If is a root of unity of odd order , the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is semi-simple. When is connected, of genus , and setting the number of punctures and the number of boundary components, its simple modules all have dimension , and are classified, up to isomorphism, by:
- (1)
an abelian classical shadow ; 2. (2)
for each inner puncture , a -th root of the holonomy of around (puncture invariant); 3. (3)
for each boundary component , a -th root of the holonomy of along (boundary invariant).
Note that, by a theorem of De Concini and Procesi, the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras at roots of unity (not necessary odd) are Azumaya of constant rank, hence they are semi-simple, their simple modules all have the same dimension and the set of their isomorphism classes is in bijection with the set of characters over the center of . With Theorem 1.2, however, we provide a characterization of this center and compute the dimension of the simple modules. It will follow from Proposition 2.28 which exhibits a tensor decomposition of into simpler quantum tori. We will not use the De Concini-Procesi theorem since the simple modules of those elementary algebras can be easily explicited.
An important class of representations of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras are the local representations defined in [BBL07]. They are classified, up to isomorphism, by a classical shadow and a complex number named its central charge. The following corollary was proven by Toulisse in [Tou16] when is a closed surface.
Corollary 1.3**.**
Let be a root of unity of odd order and consider a local representation of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra with classical shadow and central charge of an arbitrary punctured surface . The set of isomorphism classes of simple submodules of is the set of isomorphism classes of irreducible representations with classical shadow and whose product of every boundary and inner puncture invariants is equal to . Moreover, each simple summand arises with multiplicity , where denotes the genus of .
We define the (algebraic) non-abelianization map as the regular morphism associated to the algebra morphism
[TABLE]
One motivation for the study of is the following. When is a root of unity of odd order, a simple module for has both an abelian classical shadow and a non-abelian classical shadow which are related by .
A common feature between our non-abelianization map and the construction in [GMN13, HN13] is the following. For each inner edge of the triangulation , we define an oriented closed curve in such that if , then the holonomy of along is equal to the shear-bend coordinate of associated to (see Proposition 3.17). Hence the non-abelianization can be thought of as a ”balanced” shear bend parametrization.
Suppose that is closed with at least one puncture; let be the set of punctures. For each , consider a small curve of around . Let be a map and call relative character variety the sub-variety of classes of representations such that for all puncture . Each puncture lifts to two punctures and in the double branched covering . To each map such that for any one can consider the relative equivariant character variety . The non-abelianization map induces, by restriction, a regular morphism .
Theorem 1.4**.**
If for every , then the colored non-abelianization map is a birational symplectomorphism.
Note that the geometric non-abelianization map in [GMN13, HN13] is a bijection with value in the moduli space of framed flat connections. Here the framing refers to a generalization of Penner’s notion of enhancement of the Teichmüller space and were already considered by various authors including the ones in [BL07, BW19, FG09]. There is a natural map which consists in forgetting the framing, so by composition we get a map which can be compared to our algebraic non-abelianization map. The forget map is neither injective nor surjective, so is the map . Said differently, not every -flat connection admit a framing and, when it does, the framing is not unique and it is not known how far is from being bijective. Concerning the image of (and thus of ), Banahon-Liu ([BL07]) and Bonahon-Wong ([BW19]) gave some partial results that are summarized in Section 3. Theorem 1.4 gives a different kind of answer in the algebraic context: there exist open Zariski dense subsets and such that is an isomorphism.
We conclude the introduction with two comments. First, the variety is a smooth torus. The authors believe (but were not able to prove) that the colored non-abelianization map in Theorem 1.4 is a resolution of singularities (so is proper). Such a resolution would be a powerful tool to compute the E-polynomial of (i.e. the Hodge numbers of the variety). The computation of these E-polynomials is only known when is empty or has cardinality or (see [LMn14, MM16]). A second possible outcome of this paper is the following. The balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra, and thus the quantum trace map, only exist when is non-empty. However given a closed surface without puncture, Hollands and Neitzke considered in [HN13] a non-abelianization map associated to a pants decomposition . In Section , we formulate a conjecture concerning the existence of a quantum non-abelianization map that would replace the quantum trace for unpunctured surfaces.
Organisation of the paper
In Section 2, we define the involutive punctured surfaces and show that they decompose into basic involutive punctured surfaces. We recall the definition of the -fold branched covering associated to a triangulated punctured surface; it is the main example of involutive punctured surfaces that we consider. We then introduce the equivariant skein algebras and equivariant character varieties and prove Theorem 1.1. We then investigate how the skein algebra behaves under the decomposition of involutive punctured surfaces; we use this to prove Theorem 1.2. We then prove Corollary 1.3.
In Section 3, after a brief review on the stated skein algebra and the quantum trace map, we define the non-abelianization map and relate it with the shear-bend coordinates. The proof of Theorem 1.4 will follow from this relation.
Notations 1.5**.**
We reserve the notation .
2. Equivariant skein algebras and character varieties
2.1. Involutive punctured surfaces
Definition 2.1**.**
A punctured surface is a pair where is a compact oriented surface (possibly with boundary) and is a finite subset which intersects non-trivially each boundary component. The elements of are called punctures. We write . A boundary arc is a connected component of . An isomorphism of punctured surfaces is an orientation-preserving homeomorphism of the underlying surfaces such that .
Definition 2.2**.**
An involutive punctured surface is a triple where is a punctured surface and is an orientation-preserving homeomorphism such that:
- (1)
and . 2. (2)
The set of fixed-points of is finite, disjoint from , lies in the interior of and intersects non-trivially each connected component of . Moreover, each fixed-point is contained in a small disc disjoint of , that is globally preserved by and that intersects the set of fixed-point only at . 3. (3)
If is a boundary component of such that , then:
- (a)
there exists a simple closed curve parallel to preserved by the involution, and 2. (b)
has punctures, for a . 4. (4)
If is a boundary component of which is not stable under , then it contains a (non null) even number of punctures.
An isomorphism of involutive punctured surfaces is an isomorphism of punctured surfaces that is equivariant for the involutions.
Remark 2.3*.*
Every involutive punctured surface is a –fold branched covering. Indeed, let be an involutive punctured surface, and let be the set of fixed-points of . By identifying the points and , one obtains a –fold covering branched at the points . Note that such a covering is characterized by an obstruction in .
Definition 2.4**.**
The combinatorial data of an involutive punctured surface is the collection consisting of: the genus of ; the number of its boundary components; for each component , the number of punctures it contains; the number of fixed points of the involution and the number which is half of the number of punctures in the interior of .
Lemma 2.5**.**
Any two connected involutive punctured surfaces have the same combinatorial data if and only if they are isomorphic.
Proof.
One implication is tautological. For the other one, let and be two involutive punctured surfaces with the same combinatorial data. There exists a homeomorphism between and which: is orientation-preserving; sends the branched points to the branched points; sends the inner punctures to the inner punctures; and, sends a boundary component with punctures to a boundary component with punctures by preserving the punctures. For , denote by their obstructions as in Remark 2.3. For each branched point , let in be the class of a simple closed curve encircling . By definition of the coverings, both and send the classes to . In particular both classes are not null since the set of branched points is non-empty. For each inner puncture and for each boundary component , choose simple closed curves encircling and parallel to respectively and note that both and send the classes and to . Let be the subset of classes sending the ’s to and the ’s and to [math]. The mapping class group of mapping classes of that preserve the branched points and the punctures and that are equal to the identity on the boundary acts on .
Claim: the group acts transitively on .
Indeed, suppose that has genus and write the intersection form modulo . Let be a basis of where the are homology classes of simple closed curves encircling the branched points, inner punctures and boundary components and are such that . Write where is the -subspace generated by the and is generated by the . The group preserves both and , acts as the identity on and we need to show that its action on is transitive. The vector space with the intersection form is a -dimensional symplectic space and mapping classes preserves the intersection form so factors as . The map is surjective (this follows from [FM12, Theorem ]) and is the standard representation of the symplectic group on which acts transitively on the set of non zero vectors. Indeed, given , using the symplectic Gram-Schmidt process we can extend both and to a symplectic bases and and find sending to so sending to . This proves the claim.
In particular, there exists an orientation-preserving homeomorphism which preserves: the branched points, the punctures, which is equal to the identity on the boundary and which is such that . The homeomorphism lifts to an isomorphism of punctured surfaces commuting with the involutions, hence gives an isomorphism between the involutive punctured surfaces.
∎
Let be the unit disc in endowed with the central symmetry as involution.
Definition 2.6**.**
Let be an involutive punctured surface with set of fixed-points of cardinality . For , let be the following involutive punctured surface with set of fixed-points and set of punctures . For , choose an embedding that is equivariant for the involutions and that intersects only at ; also we require that . In particular, one has . The surface is given by sewing along the maps and .
Let us consider the following basic involutive punctured surfaces. Figure 1 represents them.
- (1)
, where is the unit sphere of , the punctures are and , and the involution is . 2. (2)
, where is the torus, there are no puncture, and is the elliptic involution. 3. (3)
, where is a genus two surface, there are no puncture, and is the involution exchanging the two copies of . 4. (4)
For an odd integer , denote by , where is the unit disc of , the punctures are for , and the involution is . 5. (5)
For an even integer , denote by , where the punctures are and their images for , and the involution is defined by .
Lemma 2.7**.**
If is a connected involutive punctured surface with combinatorial data , then and are non negative integers, where denotes the number of boundary components preserved by .
Proof.
Consider the surface obtained from by removing one disc preserved by around each inner puncture and each branched point. The involution restricts to an involution on without fixed point. The surface has boundary components and of them are preserved by the free involution. By Definition 2.2, one has , so . By [Aso76, Theorem ], a genus oriented surface has an orientation preserving free involution with boundary components such that of them are preserved by the involution if and only if and are even and is odd. These conditions imply that and are non negative integers. ∎
We will show that every involutive punctured surface decomposes into basic ones via . There are various ways to sew the basic surfaces that lead to the same result. We focus on one way, which is “linear” in the sense that it will not produce additional genera (i.e. other than those of and ) when sewing these surfaces.
Recipe for sewing the basic surfaces.
Let us consider a connected involutive punctured surface with combinatorial data . Let us split the set of boundary components in two types: the ”odd” ones which are preserved by the involution (so their image in have an odd number of punctures) and the ”even” ones which not preserved by (whose image in has an even number of punctures). This gives a partition of both the indexing set and of its cardinality .
We denote by the following surface.
- (1)
We sew the copies of two-by-two; one obtains a sphere with inner punctures and fixed-points. 2. (2)
We sew the copies of and two-by-two (the order does not matter); one obtains a surface of genus with fixed-points. 3. (3)
We sew the surfaces , for , two-by-two; one obtains a surface with fixed-points and boundary puntures. 4. (4)
We sew the three surfaces , and two-by-two; the resulting surface has fixed-points. 5. (5)
We sew each of the copies of for with along of its fixed-points. One obtains an involutive surface with combinatorial data .
In virtue of Lemma 2.5 we have shown the following.
Lemma 2.8**.**
Any connected involutive punctured surface with combinatorial data is isomorphic to the involutive punctured surface .
2.2. Double branched covering associated to topological triangulations
A particular class of involutive punctured surfaces that is of importance for us is that of –fold branched coverings of punctured surfaces equipped with a topological triangulation.
Definition 2.9**.**
- (1)
A small punctured surface is one of the following four connected punctured surfaces: the sphere with one or two punctures; the disc with one or two punctures on its boundary. 2. (2)
A punctured surface is said to admit a triangulation if each of its connected components has at least one puncture and is not small. 3. (3)
Suppose that admits a triangulation. A topological triangulation of is a collection of embedded arcs in (named edges) which satisfy the following conditions: the endpoints of the edges belong to ; the interior of the edges are pairwise disjoint and do not intersect ; the edges are not contractible and are pairwise non isotopic in relatively to their endpoints; the boundary arcs of belong to . Moreover, the collection is required to be maximal for these properties.
Said differently, a triangulable surface is obtained from a disjoint union of triangles by gluing some pairs of boundary arcs. The connected component in are called faces of the triangulation and their set is denoted by .
For a triangulated punctured surface , let be the dual of the –skeleton of the triangulation. The graph has one trivalent vertex inside each triangle, one univalent vertex inside each boundary arc and one edge intersecting once transversally each edge of the triangulation. Denote by the set of its vertices. Let denotes its Borel-Moore relative homology class (see [BM60]) in and the Poincaré-Lefschetz dual of sending a class to its algebraic intersection with modulo .
Definition 2.10**.**
- (1)
The covering is the double covering of branched along defined by . 2. (2)
Write the lift in of , the lift of the set of branched points and the covering involution. The involutive punctured surface associated to the triangulated punctured surface is . 3. (3)
Let be the lift of . A leaf of is a connected component of . A leaf labeling of is a labeling of its leaves by or such that any two leaves that are separated by an edge of have different labels.
In Figure 2 are represented some double branched coverings.
Remark 2.11*.*
- (1)
These double branched coverings were considered independently by Bonahon-Wong in [BW17] and Gaiotto-Hollands-Moore-Neitzke in [GMN13, HN13]. 2. (2)
If is connected, it has exactly two different leaf labelings. 3. (3)
Punctured surfaces can be glued along their boundary arcs. In particular, a triangulated punctured surface is the result of such a gluing, starting from a disjoint union of triangles (i.e. discs with three punctures on their boundary). The –fold branched coverings of these triangulated surfaces are obtained by gluing hexagons. Locally, for each face of with branching point , one has the covering as given in Figure 2: the covering involution is the central symmetry with fixed-point .
For later use, let us express the genus of in terms of the following data on : the genus of ; the number of boundary components with an even number of punctures; the number of boundary components with an odd number of punctures; the number of inner punctures; and, the number of boundary punctures.
Lemma 2.12**.**
The genus of the surface is
[TABLE]
Proof.
This is a mere application of the Riemann-Hurwitz formula (see e.g. [Har77, Section IV.2]) which implies that the Euler characteristic of is ∎
2.3. Equivariant character varieties
In this section we define the character varieties of punctured surfaces and their equivariant versions, for involutive punctured surfaces. These definitions essentially rely on a relative version of the intersection product, that we now describe.
Let be a punctured surface. Let be two cycles in . Suppose they intersect transversally in the interior of along simple crossings; in particular, for each intersection point , one has a basis of the tangent space of at that is formed by the tangent vectors and of and respectively. If the orientation of this basis agrees with that of , then we set , and we set otherwise.
For a boundary arc of , let be the set of pairs such that . Note that and do not intersect in by definition. For a pair , we define as follows. Isotope around to bring at . The isotopy must preserve the transversality condition and must not create any new inner intersection point. The resulting tangent vectors of the curves at form a basis of the tangent space; as before, the orientation of this basis gives an element according to the orientation of : if the orientation of agrees with that of , and otherwise. For every and as above, we set
[TABLE]
Definition 2.13**.**
The skew-symmetric form is the map induced by the linear extension of (1).
By [Kor19b, Lemma ], the pairing only depends on the relative homology classes , so that the above form is well-defined.
Definition 2.14**.**
The character variety is the Poisson affine variety whose algebra of regular functions is the group algebra with the Poisson bracket defined by:
[TABLE]
The following lemma implies that is a torus.
Lemma 2.15**.**
The -module is free.
Proof.
Without lost of generality, we can assume that is connected. If does not contain any boundary arc, then the fact that is free is well-known. Else, for each boundary arc choose one point and set . Consider a spine , that is an embedded graph whose set of vertices is and such that retracts on (see e.g. [Kor20] for a correspondence between ciliated graphs and open punctured surfaces). Then the embedding of pairs is a homotopy retract, so induces an isomorphism
[TABLE]
where is the set of edges of .
∎
Consider an involutive punctured surface with set of fixed points . Denote by the sub-group of elements such that .
Definition 2.16**.**
The equivariant character variety is the Poisson affine variety whose algebra of regular functions is the group algebra with Poisson bracket obtained by restricting the one of .
2.4. Equivariant skein algebras
In this section we define a skein algebra, as well as an equivariant version for involutive punctured surfaces. For a closed punctured surface, the skein algebra recovers Gelca-Uribe’s skein algebra in [GU10]. The extension to surfaces with boundary is inspired from Lê’s stated skein algebra, which is concerned with Kauffman-bracket relations, related to , while here, we are concerned with the self-linking number related to . We show that the (equivariant) skein algebra is a deformation quantization of the (equivariant) character variety.
2.4.1. The definition
Let be a punctured surface. A tangle is an oriented, compact framed, properly embedded -dimensional manifold such that for every point of the framing is parallel to the factor and points to the direction of . The height of a point is . For a boundary arc and a tangle , the points of are ordered by their heights. The tangle is said Weyl-ordered if for every boundary arc the points of have the same height. A tangle has vertical framing if for each of its points, the framing is parallel to the factor and points in the direction of . Two tangles are isotopic if they are isotopic through the class of tangles that preserve the boundary height orders. The empty set is by definition a tangle only isotopic to itself.
Every tangle is isotopic to a tangle with vertical framing and such that it is in general position with the first factor projection , that is such that \pi_{\big{|}T}:T\rightarrow\Sigma_{\mathcal{P}} is an immersion with at most transversal double points only in the interior of . We call diagram of the image together with its orientation and the over/undercrossing information at each double point. An isotopy class of diagram together with an order of for each boundary arc , determines uniquely an isotopy class of tangle. Diagrams are used to depict tangles. Locally, if two boundary points of a tangle are consecutive for the height order, then we represent this order by drawing an arrow on the boundary, such that the order increases with the direction of the arrow. If the two points have same order, then we do not draw any arrow.
The data of an isotopy class of diagrams and boundary arc orientations uniquely defines an isotopy class of tangles. Two such classes of diagrams represent the same class of tangles if and only if we can pass from one to the other by a succession of elementary moves of Figure 3.
Let be a commutative unital ring and an invertible element.
Definition 2.17**.**
The skein algebra is the free -module generated by isotopy classes of tangles, modulo the skein relations (2), (3) and (4). The product is given by stacking tangles: is the class of a tangle where has been isotoped in and in .
[TABLE]
Remark 2.18*.*
As a straightforward consequence of the relations (2), (3) and (4), one has the following relations.
[TABLE]
2.4.2. Interpretation through relative homology
Let us show that the skein algebra deforms the character variety. This essentially extends Gelca-Uribe’s result [GU10, Theorem 4.5] to surfaces with boundary. Recall the relative intersection form of Definition 2.13. Let be the -module with the product
[TABLE]
We now describe an isomorphism of algebras
[TABLE]
First let us show that, as a set, is a basis of the –module , which provides the linear map . Let us identify relevant diagrams: a diagram is called reduced if it has neither crossings nor contractible components. Contractibility is understood relatively to the boundary of . In particular, reduced diagrams give a basis for the group of cycles . To any reduced diagram corresponds a Weyl-ordered tangle; we denote its class by . Note that if is a tangle, there is a unique pair of the class of a reduced diagram and an integer such that in . Therefore, the Weyl-ordered classes associated to the reduced diagrams generate the skein algebra. In other words, we have a surjective –linear map
[TABLE]
given by for every reduced diagram .
Lemma 2.19**.**
The linear map induces an isomorphism of –modules on the homology; this is .
Proof.
First we show that if is a reduced diagram with trivial relative homology, that is in , then . If , then this is the proof of [GU10, Theorem 4.5] which we briefly sketch here. Let be a compact oriented sub-surface with oriented boundary . When is homeomorphic to a cylinder or a pair of pants, i.e. a disc with three open sub-discs removed, it follows from the homological relation of (5) that (see [GU10, Figure ]). Since every surface is obtained by gluing along boundary components such elementary cobordisms, we obtain that in the general case by induction on the number of elementary cobordisms in a pants decomposition of . Next suppose that . Since has trivial relative homology, there exists a finite collection of oriented arcs in the boundary and an oriented surface such that . Moreover, because of the relations of (5), one has . We conclude by applying the preceding case to .
Now let us show that if and are two reduced diagrams such that , then they have same relative homology class. Two such diagrams can be obtained one from each other by means of elementary moves (isotopy, Reidemeister moves followed by resolution of the crossings and the defining relations (2), (3)). Since these moves preserve the relative homology class, the result follows. ∎
Proposition 2.20**.**
The –linear isomorphism is a morphism of algebras.
Proof.
This is a direct consequence of the defining skein relations (2), (3) and of the definition of the relative intersection form. ∎
Remark 2.21*.*
If and , then the skein algebra is isomorphic to the algebra of regular functions of the character variety .
2.4.3. The equivariant version
Consider an involutive punctured surface , where has the set of fixed points , and a commutative unital ring with an invertible element . In the definition of skein algebra, we need a square root of , however the equivariant skein algebra we are about to define does not depend on this square root. We thus introduce it artificially as follows. Denote by \mathcal{R}^{\prime}:={\raisebox{1.99997pt}{\mathcal{R}[\omega^{1/2}]}\left/\raisebox{-1.99997pt}{\left((\omega^{1/2})^{2}-\omega\right)}\right.}. We have a natural embedding .
Definition 2.22**.**
The equivariant skein algebra is the -submodule spanned by classes of Weyl-ordered diagrams such that , where denotes the diagram with opposite orientation. Here is seen as an -module.
Remark 2.23*.*
Using the isomorphism , the set of anti-invariant classes is an –basis of . Moreover, the isomorphism of algebras restricts to an isomorphism of algebras, for the restricted structures.
By Proposition 2.20, is an -algebra isomorphic to the algebra whose underlying -modules is and product .
In particular, one has the following.
Corollary 2.24**.**
For and , the algebra is isomorphic to the algebra of regular functions of .
2.4.4. Triangular decompositions
Let be a triangulated punctured surface. For a reduced diagram of that is transversed to the edges of the triangulation, denote by its intersection with the triangle . The assignment extends to an injective morphism of groups
[TABLE]
Lemma 2.25**.**
The group morphism preserves the relative intersection form.
Proof.
This is a straightforward consequence of the definitions. ∎
Via the isomorphism of (7), one deduces the following injective morphism of algebras:
[TABLE]
Let be the –fold branched covering of as in Definition 2.10. As mentioned in Section 2.2, decomposes into hexagons , which are indexed by the triangles of ; one has an injection similar to (8), call it . The morphism commutes with the involutions (of and of the hexagons ) and preserves the relative intersection form. Therefore, one has an injective morphism of algebras
[TABLE]
2.5. Tensor decomposition of equivariant skein algebras
In Section 2.4.4 we described the behaviour of the equivariant skein algebra under gluing of punctured surfaces along boundary arcs. Here we describe the behaviour of the equivariant skein algebra under another type of gluing: the sewing of involutive punctured surfaces introduced in Definition 2.6. This will be particularly useful in the study of the representations of the equivariant skein algebra.
Throughout this section and is a root of unity of odd order . Let and be two involutive punctured surfaces. Let be the involutive punctured surface obtained from and by sewing them at a for a fixed-point of ; see Definition 2.6.
Proposition 2.26**.**
The algebras and are Morita equivalent. Moreover, if is either closed, or contains only one boundary component or has exactly two boundary components that are exchanged by its involution, then the algebras and are isomorphic.
To prove Proposition 2.26, we first state a technical lemma. Consider a pair where is a free -module of finite rank and is a skew-symmetric bilinear form. The quantum torus is the complex algebra with underlying vector space and product given by . Given a basis of , the quantum torus is isomorphic to the complex algebra generated by invertible elements with relations . In particular, the equivariant skein algebra is isomorphic to the quantum torus associated to the pair .
Lemma 2.27**.**
Consider two pairs and and suppose that we have a short exact sequence of modules
[TABLE]
such that for all . Then the quantum tori and are Morita equivalent.
Proof.
Denote by the common rank of and . Fix some bases and of and such that \iota(e_{a})=\left\{\begin{array}[]{ll}f_{a}&\mbox{, if }a<n;\\ 2f_{n}&\mbox{, if }a=n.\end{array}\right. and . Since is prime to , we can find integers and such that . Define two embeddings and by the formulas:
[TABLE]
Consider the two morphisms of algebras and defined by \phi_{1}(Z_{e_{a}})=\left\{\begin{array}[]{ll}Z_{e_{a}}&\mbox{, if }a<n;\\ Z_{e_{n}}^{1-kN}&\mbox{, if }a=n.\end{array}\right. and \phi_{2}(Z_{f_{a}})=\left\{\begin{array}[]{ll}Z_{f_{a}}&\mbox{, if }a<n;\\ Z_{f_{n}}^{1-kN}&\mbox{, if }a=n.\end{array}\right.. We have the identities and . The induced functors and satisfy and and we need to prove that and are isomorphic to the identity functors. Let us define an inverse functor for . As any quantum torus, the algebra is semi-simple and for an irreducible representation , the central element is sent to a scalar . For an irreducible representation , we define by \psi_{1}(\rho)(Z_{e_{a}}^{\pm 1}):=\left\{\begin{array}[]{ll}\rho(Z_{e_{a}})^{\pm 1}&\mbox{, if }a<n;\\ \chi_{\rho}(Z_{e_{n}}^{N})^{\pm\frac{k}{2\cdot 2^{\prime}}}\rho(Z_{e_{n}})^{\pm 1}&\mbox{, if }a=n.\end{array}\right. Here is the -th root of with argument in . We define for an arbitrary finite dimensional representation of by imposing and obtain an endofunctor . A straightforward computation shows that and are inverse to each other so is isomorphic to the identity functor.
We prove that similarly. Hence and are equivalence of categories and the algebras and are Morita equivalent.
∎
Proof of Proposition 2.26.
Let denote the underlying surface of with punctures and branched points removed.
By definition of , for , there is an embedding . Their images intersect as a curve . Let us slightly enlarge the image of into a surface so that is an open tubular neighborhood of . Consider the inclusion maps in :
[TABLE]
The associated Mayer-Vietoris long exact sequence writes
[TABLE]
where the homology is taken with coefficients in . More precisely:
- (1)
By definition and , in particular they are both –equivariant. Since we have , so the morphism induces an injective morphism
[TABLE] 2. (2)
If , we can decompose it as with and we can decompose with . By definition . So if is a point so that , then where
[TABLE]
is the algebraic intersection pairing as defined for instance in [Bre93, Section IV.11]. Note that the intersection pairing is preserved by the action of an oriented mapping class, in particular one has . Therefore, if , then so and is included in .
Let us investigate the lack for for being surjective; we show that there is an exact sequence
[TABLE]
First since is included in , then for each there is an such that . Since , one has . In other words, there is an integer such that . We define to be modulo .
It is clear that is included in . For the converse, let such that . There exist and an integer such that and . Define . One has , so . On the other hand, which proves that .
The first part of the proposition follows from Lemma 2.27. For the second part, it is enough to prove that, if one of the two surfaces or has no boundary, then is null. Suppose has no boundary. We proceed by contradiction: suppose that there exists such that . In this case, there exist and such that satisfies and . One can suppose that is the homology class of a simple closed curve . Let be the –th component of . Note that is zero in . Therefore bounds a closed embedded surface, say , that can be supposed to be stable under the involution ; the latter restricts to as an involution without fixed point (because has no fixed point in ). Moreover, since has three boundary components, two of them are exchanged by and one is fixed. By [Aso76, Theorem 1.3], such a free involutive surface does not exist since it should have an even number of boundary components preserved by the involution. This contradicts the assumption and concludes the proof.
∎
Recall the decomposition of involutive surfaces into basic ones given in Lemma 2.8. In virtue of Proposition 2.26, one has a Morita equivalence between the equivariant skein algebra of an involutive surface and the tensor product of the equivariant skein algebras of its basic surfaces. Let us compute the equivariant skein algebras for these surfaces:
- (1)
is isomorphic to , where is made of two simple closed curves encircling the punctures and which are anti-invariant under the involution. 2. (2)
is isomorphic to , (recall ) and and are the classes of and respectively. Here is the meridian and is the longitude ; they are oriented such that the intersection is . 3. (3)
is isomorphic to , where and are the classes of and respectively drawn in Figure 1. 4. (4)
For an odd integer , is isomorphic to
[TABLE]
where for , we set in which denotes the arc encircling oriented in the clockwise direction, as depicted in Figure 1. 5. (5)
For an even integer , is isomorphic to the -module generated by with relations:
[TABLE]
Here and . We denote by this algebra.
Proposition 2.28**.**
If is a connected involutive punctured surface with combinatorial data , then the algebra is Morita equivalent to the algebra
[TABLE]
where and .
Moreover if is either closed, or has one boundary component, or has two boundary components which are exchanged by the involution , then the algebras and are isomorphic.
Proof.
This is an immediate consequence of Lemma 2.8 and Proposition 2.26. ∎
2.6. Irreducible representations of elementary algebras
In this subsection, we suppose that is a root of unity of odd order and classify the irreducible representations of the equivariant abelian skein algebras associated to elementary involutive surfaces.
Remark 2.29*.*
De Concini and Procesi proved in [DCP93, Proposition ] that any quantum torus at root of unity (not necessarily odd) is Azumaya of constant rank. Their theorem thus implies that quantum tori are semi-simple, that their simple modules are in -to- correspondance, modulo isomorphism, with their induced character over their center and that they all have the same dimension such that is the rank of the quantum tori over its center. Let us emphasize why the De Concini-Procesi theorem is insufficient to prove Theorem 1.2. Consider a quantum torus associated to a pair , where is a free finitely generated abelian group and a skew-symmetric form as in Section . Let be the kernel of the bilinear form obtained by reduction modulo of . The center of is easily seen to be spanned by the elements for , hence its simple modules have dimension . By definition, the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is the quantum torus associated to the abelian group of balanced monomials equipped with the Weil-Petersson form (see below). Our strategy to compute the dimension for this pair, which is similar to the approach of Bonahon, Liu and Wong in [BL07, BW17] in the closed case, is to identify the pair with the pair (Theorem 1.1) and to use the sewing operation and Proposition 2.26 to decompose this pair in direct summands, up to an extension by which does not change as long as is odd. This subsection is the only moment of the paper where the De Conicini-Procesi theorem could simplify our study by classifying the simple modules of the elementary quantum tori in the tensor decomposition. However, the proof of Lemma 2.30 below, is quite elementary (in comparison to the Artin-Procesi theorem on which [DCP93, Proposition ] is based) and has the advantage of describing the simple modules explicitly.
It is well-known that the algebras and are semi-simple, that their simple modules have dimension and that the set of isomorphism classes of simple modules is in bijection with by the map sending a simple module to the scalars associated to the central elements and (see e.g. [BL07, Lemma ] for an explicit description of their simple modules). It remains to study the simple modules of the algebras . Define d(n):=\left\{\begin{array}[]{ll}\frac{n-1}{2}&\mbox{, if }n\mbox{ is odd ;}\\ \frac{n}{2}&\mbox{, if }n\mbox{ is even.}\end{array}\right.
Lemma 2.30**.**
Let be an integer. The algebra is semi-simple. Its simple modules have dimension and the set of isomorphism classes of simple modules is in bijection with the the set of characters on the center of the algebra. Moreover this center is generated by the elements for , by the element and their inverses.
Proof.
First note that so the result is immediate if . Note also that through the isomorphism sending the generators and of to the elements and of respectively; so the case follows from the preceding remark (so from e.g. [BL07, Lemma ]). It follows from the definition of that the elements and are central.
Next suppose is odd. Consider the maximal torus generated by the pairwise commuting elements with odd indices. Let be a module of . Choose a common eigenvector of the elements of and of the central elements and such that for and and . Define and let be the subspace spanned by the for . The defining relations of imply that:
[TABLE]
We deduce from these formulas that
- (1)
is -stable, 2. (2)
the vector is cyclic in , 3. (3)
for each , there is a character such that for all and 4. (4)
the are pairwise distinct and their set is exactly the set of characters such that .
So . It follows that the set is free, so forms a basis of and has dimension . Moreover, if is an operator commuting with the image of \rho_{\big{|}W} then preserves each axis . In particular , for some scalar , thus by cyclicity. This proves that is simple.
If , since is abelian so semi-simple, we can find a common eigenvector of the elements of which is not in and repeat the construction to obtain a second simple module such that . By Zorn’s lemma, there exists a maximal submodule which is direct sum of simple modules. By contradiction, if is proper, then we can find a common eigenvector of the elements of in and thus construct a simple module such that . This would contradict the maximality of , hence is semi-simple.
If and are two simple modules such that and then the eigenvalues and of the elements of the maximal torus differ by a -th root of unity . Moreover for each index there exists an index such that and are associated to the same character of .
Using the above relations we see that the vector space isomorphism between and sending to is equivariant for the action of , thus the representation depends only, up to isomorphism, on its central character evaluated on the elements and . Since the above explicit construction of works with any parameters and , every such set of parameters induces a simple module.
It remains to show that the center is generated by the elements and . A Laurent monomial is an element of the form . Note that a linear combination , with , is central if and only if each Laurent monomial is central. Consider a central Laurent monomial and let us prove that is a product of elements and . Multiplying by some elements , we can suppose that for . For , the fact that commutes with implies that , so . Since is odd, this implies that all are equal, thus is a power of . Thus we have proved the lemma when is odd.
The proof when is even is quite similar. Consider the maximal torus generated by the pairwise commuting elements for . Consider a -module and choose a common eigenvector of the element of and of the central elements and such that for and for and . Define and be the subspace spanned by the for . The defining relations of imply that:
[TABLE]
We conclude in the same manner than in the previous case.
∎
2.7. The balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra
Fix a unital commutative ring and an invertible element. Throughout this section, is a triangulated punctured surface.
Let us recall the definition of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra introduced in [BW17, Section 2.1 and 3.1] to which we refer for more details.
Denote by the set of edges of and the subset of the inner edges. Given two edges and , we denote by the number of faces of for which and are edges of such that we pass from to in the counter-clockwise direction in . The Weil-Petersson skew-symmetric form is defined by . The quantum torus is the non-commutative unital Laurent polynomial ring modded out by the following relation:
[TABLE]
A convenient -basis is given by the Weyl ordered monomials i.e. the monomials
[TABLE]
by letting the ’s running through .
A monomial is called balanced if for each triangle of with edges the sum is even. Here, when the triangle is self-folded, for instance if we put so the condition is just is even.
Remark 2.31*.*
Geometrically, this is means that there exists a collection of closed curves and arcs (with boundary in ) in such that, for each edge , the intersection of all these curves and arcs with has the same parity as .
Definition 2.32**.**
The balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is the sub-algebra of generated by the balanced monomials.
Let us define a morphism
[TABLE]
For an inner edge of , let us denote by and its two lifts in . For each balanced monomial , let
[TABLE]
We extend it by linearity to .
Lemma 2.33**.**
* is an injective morphism of algebras.*
Proof.
It is a straightforward consequence of the definitions and of the fact that sends the basis of balanced monomials of to a subset of the basis of balanced monomials of . ∎
Recall from Definition 2.10 the –fold branched covering with involution and branched points . Let be the resulting punctured surface with involution .
For each leaf labelling , let us define an isomorphism of –modules
[TABLE]
A very similar isomorphism was defined for closed punctured surfaces by Bonahon-Liu and Bonahon-Wong in [BL07, BW17] and its extension to punctured surfaces with boundary is straightforward. However, it will be useful to have an explicit description of this morphism, especially on triangles; we now spend some time in doing so.
The morphism is the linear extension of a sequence of three bijections
[TABLE]
where the first set is the basis of balanced monomials of and the next two sets are defined as follows.
Let be the oriented train track such that, in each hexagon, it looks as in Figure 4; its orientation thus depends on the leaf labeling . The train track intersects each boundary edge at one point. Note that is a deformation retract of relatively to its boundary. The projection map projects on an (non-oriented) train track which, on each triangle, looks like in Figure 4.
Let be the set of maps from the set of the edges of to the set of integers that satisfy the switch-condition illustrated in Figure 4. Likewise, let be the set of maps from the set of the edges of to the set of integers that satisfy the switch condition and that are invariant under the covering involution.
- (1)
The first bijection sends every monomial to the following map . To an edge of that connects two edges and of a triangle of with third edge , one sets
[TABLE]
The balanced condition ensures that this is an integer.
The inverse map is defined by sending to the Weyl ordered balanced monomial with obtained by choosing an arbitrary face containing and setting where are the two edges of the train track lying in and intersecting . The switch condition ensures that this integer does not depend on the choice of the triangle . 2. (2)
The second bijection sends any map to the map that sends the two lifts of an edge to . 3. (3)
The third bijection is as follows. For , one constructs a generator of by taking, for each edge of :
- •
parallel copies of that are oriented as the train tracks, if ;
- •
parallel copies of with opposite orientation, if .
Then one connects the resulting arcs following the train track in an arbitrary way. The switch condition ensures that this is possible and the homological relation of Equation (5) implies that the corresponding class in the equivariant skein algebra does not depend on the way we connect them.
The inverse bijection is as follows. For each edge of that is inside a hexagon , denote by the only arc intersecting once transversally with end point the branched point of and a puncture of oriented from the puncture to the branched point if lies in a leaf labeled by and in the opposite direction if the leaf is labeled by . To a homology class we associate the map such that is the intersection number of the Borel-Moore homology class of with . The facts that and that and have different leaf labellings ensure that . To prove that satisfies the switch condition, let be an edge separating two (non necessarily distinct) hexagons as in Figure 5. Let (resp. ) the two edges of in (resp. ) adjacent to . Then bounds an embedded square in with a diagonal of this square illustrated in Figure 5. Denote by the class of this square oriented such that . Then the switch condition follows from the following equivalences, where denotes the intersection:
[TABLE]
The bijection is illustrated in Figure 6.
To simplify notation, let us denote by the inverse of .
Theorem 2.34**.**
The –linear isomorphism is a morphism of algebras.
Proof.
First, remark that the following diagram commutes:
[TABLE]
Both the top and bottom horizontal morphisms, from (10) and (13), are morphisms of algebras. We conclude the proof with the following Lemma 2.35. ∎
Lemma 2.35**.**
The map is a morphism of algebras.
Proof.
Label the edges of by in the clockwise order and denote by be the edges of the train track as in Figure 7. The balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is generated by the balanced monomials and their inverses with relations , for . Let be such that . A simple skein computation drawn in Figure 7 shows that . Therefore, is a morphism of algebras.
∎
2.8. Irreducible and local representations of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras at odd roots of unity
Throughout this section, we suppose that is a root of unity of odd order . We classify the irreducible and the local representations of the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra.
2.8.1. Irreducible representations
We first classify the irreducible representations of .
For an inner puncture of consider a peripheral curve encircling . For an edge of the triangulation, let be the number of endpoints of that are equal to the puncture . Set
[TABLE]
The element is the class of the union of two loops around the two lifts of that project to .
For a boundary component of and for each edge , let be the number of endpoints of that lie in . Let
[TABLE]
The element is the class of a union of arcs around the lifts of the punctures of . For instance, in , using the notations of Figure 1, is the union .
Lemma 2.36**.**
The elements and are central.
Proof.
This is a straightforward consequence of the definition of the Weil-Petersson form. ∎
Define an embedding of into the center of by sending a balanced monomial to . By Corollary 2.24 and Theorem 2.34, one has an isomorphism between and the algebra of regular functions of which only depends on the choice of a leaf labeling.
An irreducible representation , induces a character on the center of , hence a point in that we denote by and call the abelian classical shadow of the representation. The images by this character of the central elements and are called, respectively, the puncture and boundary invariants of the representation.
Before we state the classification result (Theorem 1.2), let us define the following number. Suppose that is a punctured surface with of genus with boundary components and of cardinality . For each boundary component of , let . For , let be if is odd, and be if is even. We set , where runs trough the number of boundary components of . Recall that denotes the genus of computed in Lemma 2.12.
Theorem 2.37**.**
The balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra is semi-simple. Each simple module of has dimension and is determined, up to isomorphism, by:
- (1)
an abelian classical shadow ; 2. (2)
for each inner puncture , an –root of the holonomy of around (puncture invariant); 3. (3)
for each boundary component , an –root of the holonomy of along (boundary invariant).
Proof.
By Theorem 2.34 and Proposition 2.28, up to Morita equivalence, decomposes into
[TABLE]
where and .
Using Lemma 2.30 and the study of and , all factors that appear in the tensor decomposition of are semi-simple. Moreover, the sets of isomorphism classes of their simple modules are in bijection with the sets of their induced characters on their centers. Note that Morita equivalences preserve, up to isomorphism, centers; a direct look on shows that: the central elements that appear in the factors , and are sent to the central elements defining ; the central elements that appear in the factors are sent to ; and, the central elements that appear in the factors are sent to .
The dimension of the simple modules of follows from a straightforward computation using Lemma 2.30 and the fact that the simple modules of and have dimension . ∎
2.8.2. Local representations
Definition 2.38** ([BBL07]).**
A local representation of is a representation of the form
[TABLE]
where, for each triangle, is an irreducible representation.
Note that the elements of the form are central in . Therefore, the local representations send them to scalar operators, which implies that any local representation has a well-defined abelian classical shadow . Moreover, the image in of the element
[TABLE]
is central and each local representation sends it to a scalar operator . The complex is called the central charge of the local representation.
It is shown in [Tou16, Proposition 4.6] that the isomorphism classes of local representations (for arbitrary punctured surfaces) are classified by their abelian classical shadow and their central charge.
The decomposition of local representations into simple modules is known for closed punctured surfaces; see [Tou16]. We now generalize this decomposition to open surfaces.
Corollary 2.39**.**
Let be a local representation with classical shadow and central charge . The set of isomorphism classes of simple submodules of is the set of classes of those irreducible representations with classical shadow such that the product of every boundary and inner puncture invariants is equal to . Moreover, each factor arises with multiplicity , where is the genus of .
Consider a local representation and denote by the underlying representation such that . A simple sub-module of has necessarily the same classical abelian shadow by definition. Moreover since is the product of every elements and , the product of every puncture and boundary invariants of a simple sub-module must be equal to the central charge. Denote by the inner punctures of and its boundary components and write . Let denote the set of maps such that for all and such that . One has a decomposition
[TABLE]
Lemma 2.40**.**
The dimension of the subspace does not depend on .
Proof.
When has cardinality one, the result is obvious so we suppose that .
Let denote the group of those maps such that . The group acts freely and transitively on the set by the action for and .
Consider a tree such that its set of vertices is the union of the set of inner punctures of together with a subset of which intersects each boundary component exactly once, so is in natural bijection with , and the set of edges is included in . For each edge , we associate an element as follows. Let be the two endpoints of . For , let be the element which is either if is an inner puncture or if is a puncture in the boundary component . Note that by definition of , one has . The element is defined by and for .
Let us prove that the elements generate . Consider the CW chain complex and identify with the subset of chains such that by sending to . Clearly the image of is included in and since is connected, we have \mathrm{H}_{0}(T;\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})={\raisebox{1.99997pt}{\mathrm{C}{0}(T;\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})}\left/\raisebox{-1.99997pt}{\mathrm{Im}(\partial{1})}\right.}\cong\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}, so . Note that where is the generator corresponding to , so the family generates and, since is prime to , so does the family .
Now fix and orient it from to and let be the face of on the left of and be the corresponding lift of in (note that when the triangle is self-folded, admit two lifts in and we look at the one on the left). Let and write . In the algebra , one has the relations
[TABLE]
from which we deduce that induces an isomorphism between and , so they have the same dimension. We conclude using the facts that the generate and that acts transitively on .
∎
Proof of Corollary 2.39.
By Theorem 2.37, each summand is a direct sum of pairwise isomorphic simple -modules with classical shadow and inner puncture and boundary invariants for all . By Lemma 2.40, all such simple module arise with the same multiplicity . It remains to prove that to conclude. On the one hand , where is the number of faces of the triangulation, so is equal to . On the other hand, by Theorem 2.37, each summand has dimension and there are such summand. Therefore, one has the equality
[TABLE]
which implies .
∎
3. Non-abelianization maps
In this section we define the non-abelianization map
[TABLE]
and give an explicit description of it. It is associated to a morphism of Poisson algebras
[TABLE]
the core of the latter is the quantum trace map , reinterpreted with values into by means of the isomorphism of Theorem 2.34.
In the first section we give the main ingredients that compose the non-abelianization map. We define it in the second one. We then restrict ourselves to closed punctured surfaces and prove Theorem 1.4.
3.1. Kauffman-bracket skein algebras, the quantum trace map and character varieties
In this subsection, we briefly recall the definitions of the Kauffman-bracket (stated) skein algebras, of the quantum trace map and the character varieties and state some of their properties. Nothing original is claimed here except Lemma 3.4.
3.1.1. The Kauffman-bracket stated skein algebra.
Consider a punctured surface , a commutative unital ring and an invertible element . A stated tangle is the data of a tangle and a map (a state) . A stated diagram is defined similarly.
Definition 3.1**.**
[BW11, Le18] The Kauffman-bracket (stated) skein algebra is the quotient of the free -module generated by isotopy classes of stated unoriented tangles in by the skein relations (18) and (19), which are,
the Kauffman bracket relations:
[TABLE]
the boundary relations:
[TABLE]
The product is given by stacking the stated tangles; denotes placed above .
In addition to the fact that we use different skein relations and states, we impose two main differences between the skein algebras and :
- (1)
In , the tangles are unoriented. 2. (2)
In , given a boundary arc and a tangle , we impose that the points of have pairwise distinct heights.
A closed curve is a closed connected reduced (unoriented) diagram and an arc is an open connected reduced diagram. The algebra is generated by classes of closed curves and stated arcs.
3.1.2. The quantum trace map.
For a triangulated punctured surface , we recall from [BW11, Le18] the definition of the quantum trace map
[TABLE]
in the particular case where . The quantum trace is a morphism of algebras which is injective if and only if has no boundary (see [BW11, Proposition ] for the ”if” and [CL19, Section ] for the ”only if”).
For each triangle of , consider the clockwise cyclic order on its edges. Let be either a closed curve or an arc between two boundary components; suppose it is placed in minimal and transversal position with the edges of . Denote by the set . For any two points and in , we write if:
- •
and respectively belong to edges and of a common triangle ;
- •
is the immediate predecessor of for the cyclic order; and,
- •
and are on a same connected component of .
Let be the set of maps such that whenever . For each state , let be given by for , where we identify with and with . For a closed curve as above, one sets
[TABLE]
For an arc between two boundary arcs with state , the quantum trace is as follows. If bounds two arcs and of a triangle, say at and , and if is such that , then . Otherwise, let be the subset of of those states that agree with on . One sets
[TABLE]
The map is obtained by algebraic extension; we refer to [Kor19a, Lemma ] for a proof that this definition coincides with the ones in [BW11, Le18].
3.1.3. Poisson structures on skein algebras.
Let be either or . Note that the skein algebra admits canonical linear basis. By canonical, we mean that it does not depend on the ring nor on the parameter . For , such a basis is given by ; for , such a basis was defined in [Le18].
For and , let us equip the commutative algebra with the following Poisson bracket. Consider the ring of formal power series and let . We also consider the skein algebra with parameter . Each canonical basis determines an isomorphism of -modules . Denote by the product on obtained by pulling back along the product of .
Definition 3.2**.**
The Poisson bracket on is defined by the formula
[TABLE]
The Poisson bracket is well-defined: if and are two canonical basis, the algebra isomorphism is a gauge equivalence, and it follows from classical properties of gauge equivalences (see e.g.[Kon03], [GRS05, II.2]) that does not depend on the choice of the canonical basis.
Remark 3.3*.*
The algebra is a deformation quantization of the commutative Poisson algebra .
Given an involutive punctured surface , we equip the algebra with a Poisson bracket in the same manner.
Recall from Corollary 2.24 that one has an isomorphism of algebras which sends any element of to the class of a Weyl-ordered reduced diagram that represents it.
Lemma 3.4**.**
The isomorphism is Poisson.
Proof.
By Proposition 2.20, given , we have the equality . Hence one has:
[TABLE]
We deduce that , hence is a Poisson
morphism.
∎
We are now ready to define the quantum non-abelianization map. For a leaf labeling , we set
[TABLE]
where is the isomorphism of Theorem 2.34. Note that at , the morphism is obtained from the algebra morphism by reduction modulo . Therefore is a Poisson morphism.
3.1.4. Character varieties
Given a closed connected punctured surface, the - character variety is defined as the GIT quotient
[TABLE]
where is an arbitrary point. Given a loop represented by an element , we define a regular function by sending the class of a representation to the complex . It is proved in [PS00] that the regular functions generate the algebra . In [Gol86], Goldman defined a Poisson bracket on . There exists an isomorphism of Poisson algebras , from the skein algebra with (recall ), characterized by the formula . It was proved by Bullock that is an isomorphism of algebras if is reduced. The latter fact was proved independently in [PS00] and [CM09]. The fact that is Poisson was proved by Turaev in [Tur91]. Consider a spin structure on represented by quadratic form (see [Joh80] for details on quadratic forms and spin structures). It follows from the main theorem of [Bar99] that there is an algebra isomorphism sending the class of a loop to . By composition, we obtain an isomorphism of Poisson algebras characterized by .
When has non-trivial boundary, the first author defined in [Kor19b] an affine Poisson variety which generalizes the previous character variety. The Poisson structure however is not canonical and depends on the choice of an orientation of the boundary arcs of . In [KQ19], the authors defined a family of Poisson isomorphisms which depend on and on the choice of a relative spin structure . Note that for open punctured surfaces, the stated skein algebras at are no longer commutative, hence we need to work with .
3.2. Algebraic non-abelianization maps
Definition 3.5**.**
Let be a punctured surface. For a topological triangulation of , an orientation of its edges, and a leaf labelling , the non-abelianization map is the morphism of Poisson varieties that is associated to the Poisson morphism:
[TABLE]
In view of Theorem 1.4, we restrict our study of for closed punctured surfaces. Note that, in this case, depends on a choice of a leaf labelling and on a spin structure . For simplicity, we assume that is a spin structure on whose associated quadratic form satisfies for each peripheral curve encircling a puncture (such a exists since is in the kernel of the intersection form). Since the quantum trace map is injective when is closed, and since both and are irreducible, the map is dominant and its image is an open Zariski subset in this case.
We now describe . Recall that it is composed of the quantum trace map and the isomorphism . We use the same notations than Section 3.1.2; for a curve , recall that
[TABLE]
Let be the set of those balanced monomials that appear in the above expression. Denote by the image of by the bijection . In each hexagon, the elements of are as follows. For a triangle, let be its branch point. Suppose is an arc of and are two states at its endpoints. Geometrically, the bijection determines how to write in the train track : the states set the position of relatively to the branch point together with an orientation; see Figure 8. Finally, the last bijections correspond to taking the lift in of (which is placed relatively to according to ), together with an orientation (that depends on the leaf labelling) that makes it anti-invariant.
Given , denote by the associated regular function in .
Lemma 3.6**.**
For each curve in , one has
[TABLE]
For a representation , if there exists such that , then
[TABLE]
Proof.
This is an immediate consequence of the definitions. ∎
3.3. Colored non-abelianization
From now on, is a closed connected punctured surface with at least one puncture (i.e. ).
We define the relative version of character varieties of associated to a coloring . We show that the non-abelianization map induces a birational map on these varieties whenever the coloring is generic.
Definition 3.7**.**
A map is called generic if for all .
For each puncture denote by a peripheral curve around , that is, a simple closed curve that bounds a disc in whose intersection with is the singleton . Fix a point and, for a map , let
[TABLE]
For in , the variety is acted on algebraically by by conjugation. Note that this action fails to be proper.
Definition 3.8**.**
The spaces
[TABLE]
are called the relative character variety and the relative moduli space respectively.
The former is a GIT quotient and is an affine (singular) sub-variety of while the latter is a classical quotient in canonical bijection with the set of isomorphic classes of flat -structures on the surface through the holonomy map (Riemann-Hilbert correspondance). There is a surjective map:
[TABLE]
The Zariski open subset of smooth points corresponds to the classes of irreducible representations in (see e.g. [Mar09, Section ]). Writing , the restriction is a bijection.
Let be a topological triangulation of and fix a leaf labelling of .
Notations 3.9**.**
For , let and its two lifts, with the convention that belongs to the leaf labeled by .
For , we let be such that for any ; we call it a lift of .
For , denote by the two peripheral curves around and such that is oriented in the counter-clockwise direction whereas is oriented in the clockwise direction.
Definition 3.10**.**
The equivariant relative character variety is:
[TABLE]
Note that is the quotient of the algebra by the ideal generated by the elements for . On the other hand, is the quotient of the algebra by the ideal generated by the elements for .
Lemma 3.11**.**
One has .
Proof.
Recall that and that we have chosen a spin structure on such that . It follows from Equation (21) that the class is sent by to the element defined in (16). In turn, is sent by to the class . ∎
Thus, by passing to the quotient, we obtain an injective map (still denoted by the same symbol):
[TABLE]
Definition 3.12**.**
The colored non-abelianization is the regular map induced by .
Since is injective, and both and are irreducible, the image of is a Zariski open subset. Let be the intersection of the image of with the smooth part of . Let be the Zariski open subset .
Theorem 3.13**.**
If is generic, the restriction is an isomorphism.
Theorem 1.4 follows from Theorem 3.13 and [Har77, Corollary ].
The strategy to prove Theorem 3.13 is the following. The map is surjective by definition. In Section 3.3.1, we will show that the group acts freely on both and and that is equivariant for these actions. Therefore, induces a quotient map , where . The map is injective if and only if so is. In Section 3.3.2 we will identify with the shear-bend parametrization (see Proposition 3.18) which is known to be injective ([BL07]).
3.3.1. Actions of the group
In this subsection, we define free actions of the group on the varieties and and show that the non-abelianization map intertwines these actions.
Let
[TABLE]
be defined by , for and , and every curve . Note that this action is free. It is proved in [Gol88] that
[TABLE]
We denote by the quotient map. In algebraic terms, the group action is induced by a co-action:
[TABLE]
given by the formula for every curve . So the algebra is isomorphic to the subspace of co-invariant vectors for this co-action, that is to the kernel of
[TABLE]
where is the unit map sending to the neutral element of .
Let
[TABLE]
be the free action defined by , where . Algebraically, this group action is induced by the co-action
[TABLE]
defined by . The algebra of regular functions of the (algebraic) quotient of by is given by the kernel of
[TABLE]
where again is the unit map. Recall the isomorphism of Equation (14).
For each edge , let
[TABLE]
The element in depicted in Figure 9.
The kernel of is the subalgebra of generated by those such that the homology class vanishes in . The set of those classes are sent by to the subgroup of balanced monomials such that is even for every . This group is obviously generated by the elements , therefore the kernel of , is the polynomial subalgebra generated by the regular functions associated to the elements and their inverses. So we have an isomorphism
[TABLE]
We denote by the quotient map.
Lemma 3.14**.**
One has .
Proof.
By Lemma 3.6, we know that sends a curve function , for , to plus or minus a sum of functions of admissible lifts in . Since for each , the map intertwines the co-actions of in the sense that . ∎
Therefore, the non-abelianization map induces a surjective regular map
[TABLE]
such that the following diagram commutes:
[TABLE]
More precisely, the map is defined by the unique injective algebra morphism that makes the following diagram commute:
[TABLE]
Let be the inclusion whose image are those elements such that for all .
The actions and , when restricted to , preserve the subvarieties and . Moreover, the colored non-abelianization map is equivariant for these actions.
On the other hand, since the subvariety of smooth points consists of the classes of irreducible representations, it is preserved by the action of . Therefore, the map induces, by passing to the quotient through , a surjective map
[TABLE]
where \mathcal{V}_{i}={\raisebox{1.99997pt}{\mathcal{U}_{i}}\left/\raisebox{-1.99997pt}{\mathrm{H}^{1}(\Sigma;\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})}\right.}.
3.3.2. Shear-bend coordinates
The goal of this subsection is to relate the map to the shear-bend parametrization defined by Bonahon and Liu in [BL07].
From now on, the coloring is supposed to be generic.
Consider a representation . Recall the classical action of on ; in particular, any lift of in acts on .
Definition 3.15**.**
An enhancement of is the choice, for each puncture , of an axis that is invariant under the action of an arbitrary lift of . The set of the enhanced representations is acted on by via for each ; the resulting quotient is denoted by . Let be the surjection that sends a class to the class . An enhancement of is the choice of a lift through .
Recall Notation 3.9. Note that if for all , then admits exactly enhancements. In this case, one has a bijection, which depends on the leaf labeling, between the set of lifts of the generic coloring and the set of enhancements of . It is as follows.
For , let be a lift of . The axes of an enhancement of are eigenspaces of . For each puncture , there are two such spaces; they correspond to the two eigenvalues and of such that . To an enhancement such that corresponds to , one associates the lift such that (therefore one has ). Conversely, to each lift , one associate the enhancement such that its axis at is the eigenspace corresponding to .
Following Thurston [Thu98, Thu77] and Bonahon [Bon96, Bon09], Bonahon and Liu defined in [BL07, Section ] an injective map:
[TABLE]
called the shear-bend parametrization. The inverse map sends a class to complex numbers called the shear-bend coordinates of . We briefly sketch the construction of .
A pleated surface is a pair where and is a continuous map from a universal cover of to the hyperbolic upper half-space such that:
- (1)
If is a lift of in and is the lift of an edge, then is a geodesic. 2. (2)
If is a lift of a triangle of , then the closure of is an ideal triangle in . 3. (3)
The map is -equivariant.
Two pleated surfaces and are isometric if there exist an element and a lift of an isometry of , such that and . We denote by the set of isometry classes of pleated surfaces. A pleated surface naturally defines an enhanced representation : given a puncture , the closures of the images through of the lifts of the triangles adjacent to intersect in a single point invariant under which defines the enhancement of at . This construction defines an injective map:
[TABLE]
Moreover, in [BL07, Proposition ], the authors defined a bijection:
[TABLE]
The reverse map sends a pleated surface to nonzero complex numbers , for each edge, as follows. Orient the edge arbitrarily and denote by and the triangles on the left and right respectively of . Choose an arbitrary lift . The closures of the corresponding lifts of and are sent to two ideal triangles . Denote by the vertices of the square where is oriented from to and are the vertices on the left and right respectively of . We define the (exponential) shear-bend parameter to be the cross ratio:
[TABLE]
This number is independent of the choices previously made, invariant under isometry and defines the map . We refer to [Bon96, BL07] for the construction of .
Definition 3.16**.**
The shear-bend parametrization is the composition
[TABLE]
This map is closely related to the map defined in the previous subsection, as we now explain; also compare with Hollands-Neitzke’s geometric non-abelianization map described in [HN13, Section ].
Let be a lift of . Recall the bijection that associates to each an enhancement . It gives rise to an embedding that depends on .
Given define and .
Proposition 3.17**.**
One has
Proof.
It is a consequence of [BW17, Proposition ] which results from the definition of the quantum trace. A point is a character of the corresponding algebra of regular functions. This algebra has basis which is in bijection with by (15). So is described by a group morphism . By definition, if is the element associated to , then . The image is described by a character of obtained from by composing with the quantum trace map. By [BW17, Proposition ] the shear-bend coordinates are equal to , so it proves the assertion. We emphasize that the quantum trace map was designed so that this equality holds (see [BW11, Lemma ]). ∎
Corollary 3.18**.**
The two maps and are equal. In particular is injective.
Proof.
By injectivity of , an isometry class of enhanced representation is completely determined by its shear-bend coordinates. By Proposition 3.17, if is a set of coordinates, then both and admit as shear-bend coordinates, so they are equal. ∎
Proof of Theorem 3.13.
The map is surjective by definition. Since the actions of , defined in subsection , are free, the map is injective if and only if the quotient map is injective. This latter fact is proved in Corollary 3.18. ∎
4. Towards a quantum trace for unpunctured surfaces
We conclude the paper by formulating a conjecture which naturally derives from our study. The balanced Chekhov-Fock algebra, and thus the quantum trace, only make sense for a punctured surface where , since we need a topological triangulation to define it. However Hollands and Neiztke defined in [HN13] geometric non-abelianization maps for unpunctured surfaces, hence it is natural to expect the existence of a quantum non-abelianization for such surfaces as well. Let be a closed connected surface of genus . A pants decomposition is a maximal set of pairwise non isotopic simple closed curves in . Once cutting along , we obtain a disjoint union of pants , that is each is homeomorphic to a sphere with three disjoint discs removed. A pant retracts to an embedded trivalent graph with two vertices and three edges. Let be the disjoint union of the and denote by its set of vertices and its set of edges. The set induces a Borel-Moore class whose Poincaré-Lefschetz dual defines a regular double covering of . We denote by the induced double covering branched along and denote by the covering involution. By Proposition 2.28, one has an isomorphism
[TABLE]
when is a root of unity of odd order . We claim that the algebras could play a similar role, for unpunctured surfaces, to the balanced Chekhov-Fock algebras. More precisely, we formulate the
Conjecture 4.1*.*
There exists an injective morphism of algebras
[TABLE]
We now formulate some arguments in favour of our conjecture.
- (1)
Conjecture 4.1 is first motivated by the construction of Hollands and Neitzke of geometric non-abelianization map (called in Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates and associated to a pants decomposition) between and a moduli space of framed flat structures on , similar to the non-abelianization of Gaiotto-Moore-Neitzke of Foch-Goncharov coordinates (associated to a triangulation). Since the quantum trace is a deformation of the latter, one might expect that the non-abelianization in Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates admits a quantum deformation as well. 2. (2)
Equation (23) shows that, when is a root of unity of odd order , is semi-simple and its simple modules have dimension . This is precisely the PI-degree of as computed in [FKL19] and is the dimension of the representations of defined by Bonahon and Wong in [BW19]. Note that it is proved in [FKL19] that a generic simple module of is isomorphic to one of the representation in [BW19]. The authors believe that the skein algebra representations in [BW19] are obtained by composing with an irreducible representation of . 3. (3)
Eventually, when is a genus closed surface, Frohman and Gelca proved in [FG00] an analogue of Conjecture 4.1. More precisely, they defined an injective morphism of algebras sending the class of a meridian to and the class of longitude to . Note that is isomorphic to the equivariant abelian skein algebra of a double covering of by a genus surface with two branched points. Note also that the corresponding classical Poisson morphism is a double branched covering with four branched points. Hence we do not expect that the algebraic non-abelianization induced by to be birational in the closed case.
Acknowledgments
The first author is thankful to F.Bonahon, F.Costantino, L.Funar, F.Ruffino, M.Spivakovsky, J.Toulisse, D.Vendrúscolo and J.Viu Sos for useful discussions and to the University of South California and the Federal University of São Carlos for their kind hospitality during the beginning of this work. He acknowledges support from the grant ANR ModGroup, the GDR Tresses, the GDR Platon, CAPES, the GEAR Network, the CNRS and the JSPS. The second author was supported by PNPD/CAPES-2013 during the first period of this project, and by ”grant #2018/19603-0, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)” during the second period. The authors also thank the anonymous referee for interesting corrections and D.Allegretti and K. Kim for pointing to them the references [Gab17, HKM18].
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