Integer homology 3-spheres admit irreducible representations in SL(2,C)

We prove that the fundamental group of any integer homology 3-sphere different from the 3-sphere admits irreducible representations of its fundamental group in SL(2,C). For hyperbolic integer homology spheres this comes with the definition, and for Seifert fibered integer homology spheres this is well known. We prove that the splicing of any two non-trivial knots in the 3-sphere admits an irreducible SU(2)-representation. By work of Boileau, Rubinstein, and Wang, the general case follows. Using a result of Kuperberg, we get the corollary that the problem of 3-sphere recognition is in the complexity class coNP, provided the generalised Riemann hypothesis holds. To prove our result, we establish a topological fact about the image of the SU(2)-representation variety of a non-trivial knot complement into the representation variety of its boundary torus, a pillowcase. For this, we use holonomy perturbations of the Chern-Simons function in an exhaustive way - we show that any area-preserving self-map of the pillowcase fixing the four singular points, and which is isotopic to the identity, can be C^0-approximated by maps which are realised geometrically through holonomy perturbations of the flatness equation in a thickened torus. To conclude, we use a stretching argument in instanton gauge theory, and a non-vanishing result of Kronheimer and Mrowka for Donaldson's invariants of a 4-manifold which contains the 0-surgery of a knot as a splitting hypersurface.
Comment: 58 pages, 2 figures; v2: a few typos corrected; v3: results of section 10 strengthened, results about the complexity of 3-recognition added, outline of the technical main result added to the introduction, updated acknowledgements and references; v4: revision after two referee reports, to appear in Duke Math. J