【摘要】
Hedden, Herald, and Kirk initiated a program to study knots through the perturbed traceless SU(2) character varieties of associated tangles. One of the primary motivations for this strategy is its connection to Kronheimer and Mrowka's singular instanton homology. I will present my results about how these character varieties can be understood via cut and paste methods. I will explain how these results lead to a better understanding of the relationship between these character varieties and singular instanton homology.
