Kauffman bracket intertwiners and the volume conjecture

Abstract: The volume conjecture relates the quantum invariant and the hyperbolic geometry. Bonahon-Wong-Yang introduced a new version of the volume conjecture by using the intertwiners between two isomorphic irreducible representations of the skein algebra. The intertwiners are built from surface diffeomorphisms; they formulated the volume conjecture when diffeomorphisms are pseudo-Anosov. In this paper, we explicitly calculate all the intertwiners for the closed torus using an algebraic embedding from the skein algebra of the closed torus to a quantum torus, and show the limit superior related to the trace of these intertwiners is zero. Moreover, we consider the periodic diffeomorphisms for surfaces with negative Euler characteristic, and conjecture the corresponding limit is zero because the simplicial volume of the mapping tori for periodic diffeomorphisms is zero. For the once punctured torus, we make precise calculations for intertwiners and prove our conjecture.