Singularities of free group character varieties
Singularities of free group character varieties
Let X be the moduli space of SL(n,C), SU(n), GL(n,C), or U(n)-valued representations of a rank r free group. We classify the algebraic singular stratification of X. This comes down to showing that the singular locus corresponds exactly to reducible representations if there exist singularities at all. Then by relating …