Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In this article, using 3-orbifolds singular along a knot with underlying space a homology sphere ${{Y}^{3}}$, the question of existence of non-trivial and non-abelian $\text{SU(2)}$-representations of the fundamental group of cyclic branched covers of ${{Y}^{3}}$ along a knot is studied. We first use Floer Homology for knots to derive an existence result of non-abelian $\text{SU(2)}$-representations of the fundamental group of knot complements, for knots with a non-vanishing equivariant signature. This provides information on the existence of non-trivial and non-abelian $\text{SU(2)}$-representations of the fundamental group of cyclic branched covers. We illustrate the method with some examples of knots in ${{S}^{3}}$.