On representation varieties of 3-manifold groups

We prove universality theorems ("Murphy's Laws") for representation schemes of fundamental groups of closed 3-dimensional manifolds. We show that germs of SL(2,C)-representation schemes of such groups are essentially the same as germs of schemes of over rational numbers.Comment: 28 page

On the order of countable graphs

A set of graphs is said to be independent if there is no homomorphism between distinct graphs from the set. We consider the existence problems related to the independent sets of countable graphs. While the maximal size of an independent set of countable graphs is 2^omega the On Line problem of extending an independent set to a larger independent set is much harder. We prove here that singletons can be extended (``partnership theorem''). While this is the best possible in general, we give structural conditions which guarantee independent extensions of larger independent sets. This is related to universal graphs, rigid graphs and to the density problem for countable graphs