Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence, quivers, and vortices (Q1416889)

A quiver consists of vertices and a collection of arrows connecting the vertices. A quiver bundle is then a set of holomorphic bundles, one for each vertex in the quiver, together with a set of morphisms corresponding to the arrows. As an extra embellishment, the authors allow their quiver bundles to be twisted, i.e. they assume that at each vertex the bundle is of the form \(\mathcal{E}\otimes\mathcal{M}\) where \(\mathcal{M}\) is a fixed holomorphic bundle (the twisting bundle). In this paper the authors set up natural gauge theory equations on such objects, define a notion of stability, and establish the correspondence between these two. This provides a generalization of the usual Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence for holomorphic bundles, which is recovered in the case where the quiver consists of a single vertex and no arrows. Many other instances of such a Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence, notably for Higgs bundles, are also recovered as special cases of the main theorem in this paper. The method of proof is a direct adaptation of the methods used in \textit{C. T. Simpson} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 1, No. 4, 867--918 (1988; Zbl 0669.58008)] and \textit{S. B. Bradlow} [J. Differ. Geom. 33, No. 1, 169--214 (1991; Zbl 0697.32014)]. Quiver bundles may be considered as special cases of the `principal pairs' introduced in \textit{I. Mundet i Riera} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 528, 41--80 (2000; Zbl 1002.53057)]. Nevertheless, the main theorem in this paper cannot be obtained as a special case of the Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence proved by Mundet i Riera (or it's generalization given in \textit{S. B. Bradlow} [Q. J. Math. 54, No. 2, 171--208 (2003; Zbl 1064.53056)]). The reason for this has to do with the parameters which appear in both the gauge theory equations and the notions of stability. In the correspondence proved by Alvarez-Consul and Garcia-Prada, extra parameters are allowed which do not appear in the principal pair setting of Mundet i Riera.