Commuting elements in central products of special unitary groups

Abstract

In this paper the space of commuting elements in the central product $G_{m,p}$ of $m$ copies of the special unitary group $SU(p)$ is studied, where $p$ is a prime number. In particular, a computation for the number of path connected components of these spaces is given and the geometry of the moduli space $\Rep(\mathbb Z^n, G_{m,p})$ of flat principal $G_{m,p}$--bundles over the $n$--torus is completely described for all values of $n$, $m$ and $p$.

arXiv commentrevised version to appear in Proc.Edinburgh Math. Soc. (Isle of Skye 2009 Conference Volume)