The variety of characters in PSL(2,C)
Résumé
We study some basic properties of the variety of characters in PSL(2,C) of a finitely generated group. In particular we give an interpretation of its points as characters of representations. We construct 3-manifolds whose variety of characters has arbitrarily many components that do not lift to SL(2,C). We also study the singular locus of the variety of characters of a free group.