Quasi-Poisson structures on representation spaces of surfaces

Abstract: Given an oriented surface S with base point * on the boundary, we introduce for all N>0, a canonical quasi-Poisson bracket on the space of N-dimensional linear representations of \pi_1(S,). Our bracket extends the well-known Poisson bracket on GL_N-invariant functions on this space. Our main tool is a natural structure of a quasi-Poisson double algebra (in the sense of M. Van den Bergh) on the group algebra of \pi_1(S,).