Around 30 years ago, Lin defined an analog of the Casson invariant for knots. This invariant counts representations of the knot group into SU(2) which satisfy tr(ρ(m)) = c for some fixed c. As a function of c, the Casson-Lin invariant turns out to be given by the Levine-Tristram signature function.
If K is a small knot in S³, I'll describe a version of the Casson-Lin invariant which counts representations of the knot group into SL₂(R) with tr(ρ(m)) = c for c in [-2,2]. The sum of the SU(2) and SL₂(R) invariants is a constant h(K), independent of c. I'll discuss the proof of this fact and give some applications to the existence of real parabolic representations and left-orderings. This is joint work with Nathan Dunfield.
