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arXiv · 2610.01881

$\rm{PGL}_2$ webs at roots of unity

Vijay Higgins·Bryan Silva·Amy Somers·David Stephens·Srijan Sundar·Parth Wokhlu
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Abstract

We study webs on surfaces for the $\rm{PGL}_2$ skein theory specialized at roots of unity. We construct the $\rm{PGL}_2$ analogue of Chebyshev polynomials and use them to construct central elements in the skein algebra. We then focus on the cases of the 3-punctured sphere and the closed torus. We compute the Frobenius homomorphism for these two surfaces and show that the $\rm{PGL}_2$ Frobenius homomorphism for the torus is not injective when the quantum parameter $q^2$ is a root of unity of even order $n.$

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Vijay Higgins, Bryan Silva, Amy Somers, David Stephens, Srijan Sundar, Parth Wokhlu. 2026-10-01. $\rm{PGL}_2$ webs at roots of unity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01881

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