An SL(2,C) Algebro-Geometric Invariant of Knots
  In this paper, we define a new algebro-geometric invariant of 3-manifolds resulting from the Dehn surgery along a hyperbolic knot complement in S^3. We establish a Casson type invariant for these 3-manifolds. In the last section, we explicitly calculate the character variety of the figure-eight knot and discuss some applications, as well as the computation of our new invariants for some 3-manifolds resulting from the Dehn surgery along the figure-eight knot. 
Weiping Li, Qingxue Wang