The Hitchin-Simpson equations are first-order non-linear equations for a pair consisting of a connection and a Higgs field. In this paper, we study the behavior of sequences of solutions to the Hitchin-Simpson equations on closed Kähler manifolds with unbounded $L^2$ norms of the Higgs fields. We prove a compactness result for the connections and renormalized Higgs fields, which generalizes the work of Taubes and Mochizuki.
As applications, we prove that every $\mathbb{Z}/2$ harmonic 1-form on a Kähler manifold can be deformed into a sequence of solutions to the Hitchin-Simpson equations. Additionally, we solve the generalized Hitchin's WKB problem on any Kähler manifold.
We extend the Donaldson-Corlette-Hitchin-Simpson correspondence between Higgs bundles and flat connections on compact Kähler manifolds to compact quasi-regular Sasakian manifolds. A particular consequence is the translation of restrictions on Kähler groups proved using the Donaldson-Corlette-Hitchin-Simpson correspondence to fundamental groups of compact Sasakian manifolds.
In this paper, we study the existence of Poisson metrics on flat vector bundles over noncompact Riemannian manifolds and discuss related consequence, specially on the applications in Higgs bundles, towards generalizing Corlette-Donaldson-Hitchin-Simpson's nonabelian Hodge correspondence to noncompact Kähler manifolds setting.
Solutions of Hitchin's self-duality equations corresponds to special real sections in the Deligne-Hitchin moduli space -- twistor lines. A question posed by Simpson in 1997 asks whether all real sections give rise to global solutions of the self-duality equations. An affirmative answer would allow for complex analytic procedure to obtain all solutions of the self-duality equations. The purpose of this paper is to construct counter examples given by certain (branched) Willmore surfaces in $3$-space (with monodromy) via the generalized Whitham flow. Though these higher solutions do not give rise…
Using Hitchin's parameterization of the Hitchin-Teichmüller component of the $SL(n,\mathbb{R})$ representation variety, we study the asymptotics of certain families of representations. In fact, for certain Higgs bundles in the $SL(n,\mathbb{R})$-Hitchin component, we study the asymptotics of the Hermitian metric solving the Higgs bundle equations. This analysis is used to estimate the asymptotics of the corresponding family of flat connections as we scale the differentials by a real parameter. We consider Higgs fields that have only one holomorphic differential $q_n$ of degree $n$ or $q_{n-1}$…
The notion of flat $λ$-connections as the interpolation of usual flat connections and Higgs fields was suggested by Deligne and further studied by Simpson. Mochizuki established the Kobayashi--Hitchin-type theorem for $λ$-flat bundles ($λ\neq 0$), which is called the Mochizuki correspondence. In this paper, on the one hand, we generalize Mochizuki's result to the case when the base being a compact balanced manifold, more precisely, we prove the existence of harmonic metrics on stable $λ$-flat bundles ($λ\neq 0$). On the other hand, we study two applications of the Simpson--Mochizuki correspond…
We prove a Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence for extensions of Higgs bundles. The results generalize known results for extensions of holomorphic bundles. Using Simpson's methods, we construct moduli spaces of stable objects. In an appendix we construct Bott-Chern forms for Higgs bundles
A twisted Higgs bundle on a Kähler manifold $X$ is a pair $(E,ϕ)$ consisting of a holomorphic vector bundle $E$ and a holomorphic bundle morphism $ϕ\colon M\otimes E \to E$ for some holomorphic vector bundle $M$. Such objects were first considered by Hitchin when $X$ is a curve and $M$ is the tangent bundle of $X$, and also by Simpson for higher dimensional base. The Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence for such pairs states that $(E,ϕ)$ is polystable if and only if $E$ admits a hermitian metric solving the Hitchin equation. This correspondence is a powerful tool to decide whether there exists a s…
Using the work of Bonahon-Dreyer and Fock-Goncharov, one can construct a real-analytic parameterization for the PSL(n,R) Hitchin component of a surface S, that is explicitly analogous to the Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates on the Teichmuller space of S. Given a Hitchin representation, we give a lower bound on the "length" of any closed curve on S in terms of the parameters describing this representation. We then show that this lower bound is good enough to produce large families of sequences in the Hitchin component along which the topological entropy converges to 0.
Arising from a topological twist of $\mathcal{N} = 4$ super Yang-Mills theory are the Kapustin-Witten equations, a family of gauge-theoretic equations on a four-manifold parametrized by $t\in\mathbb{P}^1$. The parameter corresponds to a linear combination of two super charges in the twist. When $t=0$ and the four-manifold is a compact Kähler surface, the equations become the Simpson equations, which was originally studied by Hitchin on a compact Riemann surface, as demonstrated independently in works of Nakajima and the third-named author. At the same time, there is a notion of $λ$-connection …
The Corlette-Donaldson-Hitchin-Simpson's correspondence states that, on a compact Kähler manifold $(X, ω)$, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the moduli space of semisimple flat complex vector bundles and the moduli space of poly-stable Higgs bundles with vanishing Chern numbers. In this paper, we extend this correspondence to the projectively flat bundles case. We prove that there is an equivalence of categories between the category of $ω$-semi-stable (poly-stable) Higgs bundles $(E, \overline{\partial}_{E}, ϕ)$ with $(2rc_{2}(E)-(r-1)c_{1}^{2}(E))\cdot [ω]^{n-2}=0 $ and the catego…
Let $X$ be a compact Riemann surface. Let $(E,θ)$ be a stable Higgs bundle of degree $0$ on $X$. Let $h_{\det(E)}$ denote a flat metric of the determinant bundle $\det(E)$. For any $t>0$, there exists a unique harmonic metric $h_t$ of $(E,θ)$ such that $\det(h_t)=h_{\det(E)}$. We prove that if the Higgs bundle is induced by a line bundle on the normalization of the spectral curve, then the sequence $h_t$ is convergent to the naturally defined decoupled harmonic metric at the speed of the exponential order. We also obtain a uniform convergence for such a family of Higgs bundles.
In this article, we study the Kapustin-Witten equations on a closed, simply-connected, four-dimensional manifold which were introduced by Kapustin and Witten. We use the Taubes' compactness theorem in arXiv:1307.6447v4 to prove that if $(A,ϕ)$ is a smooth solution of Kapustin-Witten equations and the connection $A$ is closed to a $generic$ ASD connection $A_{\infty}$, then $(A,ϕ)$ must be a trivial solution. We also prove that the moduli space of the solutions of Kapustin-Witten equations is non-connected if the connections on the compactification of moduli space of ASD connections are all $ge…
We introduce para-complex and pseudo-Riemannian geometric methods for the study of representations of surface groups in $\mathrm{SL}(2m+1,\mathbb{R})$. For $m=1$ our techniques allow to recover several known results for Hitchin representations without any reference to convex projective geometry or hyperbolic affine spheres. In particular, we describe analytically the Guichard-Wienhard domain of discontinuity in the flag variety and the corresponding concave foliated flag structure of Nolte-Riestenberg. In higher rank, we obtain a one-to-one correspondence between stable cyclic $\mathrm{SL}(2m+…
We introduce the notion of Hermitian Higgs bundle as a natural generalization of the notion of Hermitian vector bundle and we study some vanishing theorems concerning Hermitian Higgs bundles when the base manifold is a compact complex manifold. We show that a first vanishing result, proved for these objects when the base manifold was Kähler, also holds when the manifold is compact complex. From this fact and some basic properties of Hermitian Higgs bundles, we conclude several results. In particular we show that, in analogy to the classical case, there are vanishing theorems for invariant sect…
Let $(E,\overline{\partial}_E,θ)$ be a stable Higgs bundle of degree $0$ on a compact connected Riemann surface. Once we fix the flat metric $h_{\det(E)}$ on the determinant of $E$, we have the harmonic metrics $h_t$ $(t>0)$ for the stable Higgs bundles $(E,\overline{\partial}_E,tθ)$ such that $\det(h_t)=h_{\det(E)}$. We study the behaviour of $h_t$ when $t$ goes to $\infty$. First, we show that the Hitchin equation is asymptotically decoupled under the assumption that the Higgs field is generically regular semisimple. We apply it to the study of the so called Hitchin WKB-problem. Second, we s…
A holomorphic Poisson structure induces a deformation of the complex structure as Hitchin's generalized geometry. Its associated cohomology naturally appears as the limit of a spectral sequence of a double complex. The first sheet of this spectral sequence is the Dolbeault cohomology with coefficients in the exterior algebra of the holomorphic tangent bundle. We identify various necessary conditions on compact complex manifolds on which this spectral sequence degenerates on the level of the second sheet. The manifolds to our concern include all compact complex surfaces, Kähler manifolds, and n…
We study Yang-Mills connections on holomorphic bundles over complex Kähler manifolds of arbitrary dimension, in the spirit of Hitchin's and Simpson's study of flat connections. The space of non-Hermitian Yang-Mills (NHYM) connections has dimension twice the space of Hermitian Yang-Mills connections, and is locally isomorphic to the complexification of the space of Hermitian Yang-Mills connections (which is, by Uhlenbeck and Yau, the same as the space of stable bundles). Further, we study the NHYM connections over hyperkähler manifolds. We construct direct and inverse twistor transform from NHY…
This article finds a structure of singular sets on compact Kahler surfaces, which Taubes introduced in the studies of the asymptotic analysis of solutions to the Kapustin-Witten equations and the Vafa-Witten ones originally on smooth four-manifolds. These equations can be seen as real four-dimensional analogues of the Hitchin equations on Riemann surfaces, and one of common obstacles to be overcome is a certain unboundedness of solutions to these equations, especially of the "Higgs fields". The singular sets by Taubes describe part of the limiting behaviour of a sequence of solutions with this…
