Symplectic and hyper-Kähler structures in a dimensional reduction of the Seiberg-Witten equations with a Higgs field (Q1429196)

Dimensional reductions of certain gauge theories from four dimension to two dimensions have proved to be geometrically very rich, as the moduli spaces of solutions to the dimensionally reduced gauge equations often exhibit particular structures. In this context, the paper under review studies a general dimensional reduction of the Seiberg-Witten equations (on \(\mathbb R^4\)) to dimension two. More precisely, the author develops a Seiberg-Witten theory defined on a compact Riemann surface \(M\) of genus \(g\geq 1\) with a distinguished Hermitian line bundle \(L\) over \(M\). In contrast to the usual dimensional reductions of the Seiberg-Witten equations studied by C. Taubes, S. Bradlow-O. Garcia-Prada, K. Olsen, and others, the author's variant leads to the presence of a Higgs field of the reduction. This novel feature is then used to study the moduli space of solutions to the dimensionally reduced Seiberg-Witten equations on \(M\) and it turns out that this moduli space carries a natural symplectic structure. Moreover, the moduli spaces associated with certain subsets of the full set of Seiberg-Witten equations on \(M\) are shown to be non-empty and equipped with a natural hyper-Kähler structure, which represents another novel feature compared to the other existing reduction theories for the Seiberg-Witten equations. Already in the case of an elliptic curve \((g= 1)\), the author is able to produce more solutions than the previously known vortex solutions, which additionally emphasizes the significance of his generalized approach towards a dimensionally reduced Seiberg-Witten theory.