Algebra Seminar

A representation variety is a space of representations from a finitely gen erated group to a Lie group or algebraic group. The theory of representation va rieties combines ideas from group theory, algebraic geometry, differential geome try and Lie theory. I will discuss a construction which I hope will eventually produce new numerical invariants for a class of compact 3-manifolds. Roughly speaking, the idea is to count the number of conjugacy classes of representations of the fundamental group of the manifold.