Character Varieties of surfaces as completely integrable systems

Abstract: It is known that the trace functions of a maximal set of disjoint simple closed curves on a closed surface make its SU(2)-character variety into an (almost) completely integrable dynamical system. We prove an analogous statement for all rank 2 Lie groups. We will discuss the possible generalizations of this result to higher ranks and,
if time permits, its applications to quantization of character varieties.