Heat kernel and moduli spaces. II (Q1372893)

The author continues the study on the topology of the moduli spaces of flat bundles on a Riemann surface by using the heat kernels on compact Lie groups. In the considered case the local density is given by the Reidemeister torsion of the cochain complex of the simplest cell decomposition which gives the standard representation of the fundamental group of the Riemann surface. The Reidemeister torsion is identified to the symplectic volume form, or the \(L^2\) volume form, of the moduli space through a Poincaré duality identity among the torsions. The global density is an infinite sum over all irreducible representations of the compact Lie group. This simple observation gives a complete answer to the questions about the intersection numbers of the cohomology classes of the moduli spaces of flat \(G\)-bundles for any compact semi-simple Lie group \(G.\) The purposes of this note are manifold. The first is to extend the results in part I of this paper [\textit{K. Liu}, Math. Res. Lett. 3, No. 6, 743-762 (1996; Zbl 0871.58014)] to Riemann surfaces with several boundary components, to non-orientable Riemann surfaces and to the cases when the moduli spaces are singular; the second is to prove some general vanishing results about the characteristic numbers of the moduli spaces; the third is to apply the author's method to study the corresponding moduli spaces when \(G\) is non-compact by using Hitchin's Higgs moduli spaces; the fourth is to introduce some invariants for knots and for 3-manifolds by using the heat kernel method.