Last time (possibly with help from the survival guide) we have seen that the universal map from the modular group $\Gamma = PSL_2(\mathbb{Z})$ to its profinite completion $\hat{\Gamma} = \underset{\leftarrow}{lim}~PSL_2(\mathbb{Z})/N$ (limit over all finite index normal subgroups $N$) gives an embedding of the sets of (continuous) simple finite dimensional representations

$\mathbf{simp}_c~\hat{\Gamma} \subset \mathbf{simp}~\Gamma$

and based on the example $\mu_{\infty} = \mathbf{simp}_c~\hat{\mathbb{Z}} \subset \mathbf{simp}~\mathbb{Z} = \mathbb{C}^{\ast}$ we would like the above embedding to be dense in some kind of noncommutative analogon of the Zariski topology on $\mathbf{simp}~\Gamma$.

We use the Zariski topology on $\mathbf{simp}~\mathbb{C} \Gamma$ as in these two M-geometry posts (( already, I regret terminology, I should have just called it noncommutative geometry )). So, what’s this idea in this special case? Let $\mathfrak{g}$ be the vectorspace with basis the conjugacy classes of elements of $\Gamma$ (that is, the space of class functions). As explained here it is a consequence of the Artin-Procesi theorem that the linear functions $\mathfrak{g}^{\ast}$ separate finite dimensional (semi)simple representations of $\Gamma$. That is we have an embedding

$\mathbf{simp}~\Gamma \subset \mathfrak{g}^{\ast}$

and we can define closed subsets of $\mathbf{simp}~\Gamma$ as subsets of simple representations on which a set of class-functions vanish. With this definition of Zariski topology it is immediately clear that the image of $\mathbf{simp}_c~\hat{\Gamma}$ is dense. For, suppose it would be contained in a proper closed subset then there would be a class-function vanishing on all simples of $\hat{\Gamma}$ so, in particular, there should be a bound on the number of simples of finite quotients $\Gamma/N$ which clearly is not the case (just look at the quotients $PSL_2(\mathbb{F}_p)$).

But then, the same holds if we replace ‘simples of $\hat{\Gamma}$’ by ‘simple components of permutation representations of $\Gamma$’. This is the importance of Farey symbols to the representation problem of the modular group. They give us a manageable subset of simples which is nevertheless dense in the whole space. To utilize this a natural idea might be to ask what such a permutation representation can see of the modular group, or in geometric terms, what the tangent space is to $\mathbf{simp}~\Gamma$ in a permutation representation (( more precisely, in the ‘cluster’ of points making up the simple components of the representation representation )). We will call this the modular content of the permutation representation and to understand it we will have to compute the tangent quiver $\vec{t}~\mathbb{C} \Gamma$.