# Question about the Structure group of a circle bundle over a Riemann surface

The last two pages of Appendix C in Milnor's Characteristic Classes gives an example of a flat bundle with nonzero Euler class. I have a question about the structure group of this bundle.

The example starts with a Riemann surface of genus larger than 2. Its fundamental group, $G$, is represented as a subgroup of $\text{PSL}(2,\Bbb R)$ and acts on the upper half-plane $H$ as the group of covering transformations of the surface.

This action preserves the extended real axis and gives a circle bundle over the surface, $E = (H \times \Bbb{RP}^1)/G \to H/G = S$.

Proof is given that it is isomorphic to the bundle of tangent directions to the surface.

This bundle has a 2-fold cover corresponding to the cohomology class in $H^1(E;\Bbb Z_2)$ that maps into the Thom class of the associated 2-plane bundle under the connecting homomorphism. This class exists because the second Stiefel-Whitney class of the bundle is zero (the surface has even Euler characteristic).

So the 2-fold cover is another circle bundle and each fiber circle in the original is covered by a fiber circle of the two fold cover.

Now it is claimed that the structure group of this two fold cover comes from a representation of $G$ in $\text{SL}(2,\Bbb R)$. I think this means that it is the quotient $(H\times \Bbb{RP}^1)/G$ where $G$ now acts on the projective line as a subgroup of $\text{SL}(2,\Bbb R)$ rather than $\text{PSL}(2,\Bbb R)$. This I do not understand.

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