Related papers: Representations of surface groups and Higgs bundle…
Higgs fields are attributes of classical gauge theory on a principal bundle $P\to X$ whose structure Lie group $G$ if is reducible to a closed subgroup $H$. They are represented by sections of the quotient bundle $P/H\to X$. A problem lies…
Higgs bundles and non-abelian Hodge theory provide holomorphic methods with which to study the moduli spaces of surface group representations in a reductive Lie group G. In this paper we survey the case in which G is the isometry group of a…
Lecture notes from the Concentrated Graduate Course preceding the Workshop on Hodge Theory in String Theory at the Fields Institute in Toronto, November 11--15, 2013.
Using Morse-theoretic techniques, we show that the moduli space of U*(2n)-Higgs bundles over a compact Riemann surface is connected.
These lecture notes consist of an introduction to moduli spaces in algebraic geometry, with a strong emphasis placed on examples related to the theory of quiver representations. The goal is to provide the background necessary to understand…
We classify the connected components of the space of representations of the fundamental group of a closed oriented surface of genus $\geq 2$ in $Sp(4,{\mathbf R})$. We prove that this is equivalent to classifying the connected components of…
We study moduli spaces of Higgs sheaves valued in line bundles and the associated Hitchin maps on surfaces. We first work out Picard groups of generic (very general) spectral varieties which holds for dimension of at least 2, i.e., a…
An introduction to moduli spaces of representations of quivers is given, and results on their global geometric properties are surveyed. In particular, the geometric approach to the problem of classification of quiver representations is…
This set of lecture notes first gives an introduction to the geometry of principal bundles. Next, it demonstrates how they can be used to formalize the concept of gauge theories arising in physics. A basic familiarity with the differential…
This article is a revised version of the talk I gave at the conference ``Beauville Surfaces and groups'' held in Newcastle in June 2012. It presents some group theoretical methods to give bounds on the number of connected components of the…
The character varieties of representations of a surface group into the Lie groups SL(m,H), SO(2m,H) and Sp(m,m) have a holomorphic description in terms of the moduli space of Higgs bundles. We show that the fibres of the integrable system…
Some connected components of a moduli space are mundane in the sense that they are distinguished only by obvious topological invariants or have no special characteristics. Others are more alluring and unusual either because they are not…
Higgs bundles over a closed orientable surface can be defined for any real reductive Lie group G. In this paper we examine the case G=SO*(2n). We describe a rigidity phenomenon encountered in the case of maximal Toledo invariant. Using this…
We study moduli spaces of parabolic Higgs bundles on a curve and their dependence on the choice of weights. We describe the chamber structure on the space of weights and show that, when a wall is crossed, the moduli space undergoes an…
The paper aims at giving an introduction to the notion of quantum curves. The main purpose is to describe the new discovery of the relation between the following two disparate subjects: one is the topological recursion, that has its origin…
We describe the moduli space of Higgs pairs on an irreducible nodal curve of arithmetic genus one and its geometric structures in terms of the Hitchin map and a flat degeneration of the moduli space of Higgs bundles on an elliptic curve.
We study Higgs bundles over an elliptic curve with complex reductive structure group, describing the (normalization of) its moduli spaces and the associated Hitchin fibration. The case of trivial degree is covered by the work of Thaddeus in…
This is a review article exploring similarities between moduli of quiver representations and moduli of vector bundles over a smooth projective curve. After describing the basic properties of these moduli problems and constructions of their…
Let X be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus g > 0 equipped with a nonzero holomorphic 1-form. Let M denote the moduli space of semistable Higgs bundles on X of rank r and degree r(g-1)+1; it is a complex symplectic manifold. Using…
We study the character variety of representations of the fundamental group of a closed surface of genus $g\geq2$ into the Lie group SO(n,n+1) using Higgs bundles. For each integer $0<d\leq n(2g-2),$ we show there is a smooth connected…