Miraculous cancellations for quantum SL 2

Abstract

In earlier work, Helen Wong and the author discovered certain "miraculous cancellations" for the quantum trace map connecting the Kauffman bracket skein algebra of a surface to its quantum Teichmueller space, occurring when the quantum parameter $q$ is a root of unity. The current paper is devoted to giving a more representation theoretic interpretation of this phenomenon, in terms of the quantum group $U_q(sl_2)$ and its dual Hopf algebra $SL_2^q$.