Section: New Results

On $SL(3,ℂ)$-representations of the Whitehead link group

In [9], we describe a family of representations in $SL(3,ℂ)$ of the fundamental group $\pi$ of the Whitehead link complement. These representations are obtained by considering pairs of regular order three elements in $SL(3,ℂ)$ and can be seen as factorising through a quotient of $\pi$ defined by a certain exceptional Dehn surgery on the Whitehead link. Our main result is that these representations form an algebraic component of the $SL(3,ℂ)$-character variety of $\pi$.