English

Parallel surface defects, Hecke operators, and quantum Hitchin system

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-04-02 v4 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We examine two types of half-BPS surface defects - regular monodromy surface defect and canonical surface defect - in four-dimensional gauge theory with N=2\mathcal{N}=2 supersymmetry and Ωε1,ε2\Omega_{\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2}-background. Mathematically, we investigate integrals over the moduli spaces of parabolic framed sheaves over P2\mathbb{P}^2. Using analytic methods of N=2\mathcal{N}=2 theories, we demonstrate that the former gives a twisted D\mathcal{D}-module on BunGC\text{Bun}_{G_{\mathbb{C}}} while the latter acts as a Hecke operator. In the limit ε20\varepsilon_2 \to 0, the cluster decomposition implies the Hecke eigensheaf property for the regular monodromy surface defect. The eigenvalues are given by the opers associated to the canonical surface defect. We derive, in our N=2\mathcal{N}=2 gauge theoretical framework, that the twisted D\mathcal{D}-modules assigned to the opers in the geometric Langlands correspondence represent the spectral equations for quantum Hitchin integrable system. A duality to topologically twisted four-dimensional N=4\mathcal{N}=4 theory is discussed, in which the two surface defects are mapped to Dirichlet boundary and 't Hooft line defect. This is consistent with earlier works on the N=4\mathcal{N}=4 theory approach to the geometric Langlands correspondence.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.04656,
  title  = {Parallel surface defects, Hecke operators, and quantum Hitchin system},
  author = {Saebyeok Jeong and Norton Lee and Nikita Nekrasov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.04656},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

89+23 pages, 3 figures; v2. typos corrected, references added; v3. minor corrections; v4. published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:57:37.157Z