Random Unitary Representations of Surface Groups I: Asymptotic Expansions

In this paper, we study random representations of fundamental groups of surfaces into special unitary groups. The random model we use is based on a symplectic form on moduli space due to Atiyah, Bott and Goldman. Let [Formula: see text] denote a topological surface of genus [Formula: see text] . We establish the existence of a large n asymptotic expansion, to any fixed order, for the expected value of the trace of any fixed element of [Formula: see text] under a random representation of [Formula: see text] into [Formula: see text] . Each such expected value involves a contribution from all irreducible representations of [Formula: see text] . The main technical contribution of the paper is effective analytic control of the entire contribution from irreducible representations outside finite sets of carefully chosen rational families of representations.