Topological invariants of parabolic \(G\)-Higgs bundles (Q2223526)

The authors study connected components of moduli spaces of polystable parabolic \(G\)-Higgs bundles for a semisimple real Lie group \(G\). They study topological properties of these moduli spaces over a Riemann surface with a divisor of finitely many distinct points. For a split real form of a complex simple Lie group, they compute the dimension of apparent parabolic Teichmüller components. In the case of isometry groups of classical Hermitian symmetric spaces of tube type, they provide new topological invariants for maximal parabolic \(G\)-Higgs bundles arising from a correspondence to orbifold Higgs bundles. Using orbifold cohomology the authors count the least number of connected components of moduli spaces of such objects. They further exhibit an alternative explanation of fundamental results on counting components in the absence of a parabolic structure. This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 is an introduction to the subject and summarizes the main results. Section 2 contains the basic definitions for parabolic \(\mathrm{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})\)-Higgs bundles, while the more general definitions for any semisimple Lie group \(G\) are put in an Appendix. In this Appendix the authors also work out particular examples to demonstrate the relation between the general stability condition for any group \(G\) and the classical one for \(\mathrm{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})\). In Section 3 they adapt the deformation theory from the non-parabolic case to provide a calculation of the expected dimension of the moduli space of polystable parabolic \(G\)-Higgs bundles. Section 4 contains the construction of parabolic Teichmüller components in full generality for any split real form \(G\) of a complex simple Lie group; a proof of the parabolic Higgs analog of \textit{N. J. Hitchin}'s main theorem in [Topology 31, No. 3, 449--473 (1992; Zbl 0769.32008)] is presented here and is a generalization of the argument in [\textit{I. Biswas} et al., Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 349, No. 4, 1551--1560 (1997; Zbl 0964.32011)]. From Section 5 on, the authors are dealing with the cases when the group \(G\) is Hermitian symmetric. After introducing the parabolic Toledo invariant for parabolic \(\mathrm{Sp} (2n,\mathbb{R})\)-Higgs bundles, they prove a Milnor-Wood type inequality, which allows one to introduce the notion of maximality. Section 6 is again preparatory and contains no new results; the authors review here the correspondence to orbifold Higgs bundles in a way that should fit into our needs. In Section 7 they introduce the topological invariants induced by this correspondence and calculate the total number of invariants in the case \(G=\mathrm{Sp}(2n,\mathbb{R})\). In Section 8 they continue applying this component count method for the rest Hermitian symmetric Lie groups of tube type. Lastly, Section 9 contains a realization of classical results from the non-parabolic case formulated in terms of their \(V\)-bundle correspondence method.