On weakly maximal representations of surface groups

Abstract

We introduce and study a new class of representations of surface groups into Lie groups of Hermitian type, called {\em weakly maximal} representations. We prove that weakly maximal representations are discrete and injective and we describe the structure of the Zariski closure of their image. Furthermore we prove that the set of weakly maximal representations is a closed subset of the representation variety and describe its relation to other geometrically significant subsets of the representation variety.

In this version the paper has been split in two parts. The part that has been removed appears now as http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.02232. The current version of the paper will appear in the Journal of Differential Geometry