A geometric approach to orthogonal Higgs bundles (Q1630212)

This paper studies the geometry of the moduli space of \(\mathrm{SO}(p+1,p)\)-Higgs bundles in the moduli space of \(\mathrm{SO}(2p+1,\mathbb{C})\)-Higgs bundles on a Riemann surface of genus greater than or equal to \(2\). In particular, using the correspondence with \(\mathrm{Sp}(2p,\mathbb{C})\)-Higgs bundles due to Langlands duality, the author obtains that the intersection of the moduli space of \(\mathrm{SO}(p+1,p)\)-Higgs bundles with the regular fibres of \(\mathrm{SO}(2p+1,\mathbb{C})\)-Hitchin fibration is given by two copies of a quotient of \(\mathrm{Prym}(S,S/\sigma)[2]\), where \(S\) is the associated spectral curve over \(\Sigma\) and \(\sigma\) is a natural involution. Another significant result in the paper, obtained by the use of KO-theory, is the computation of the Stiefel-Whitney classes of an \(\mathrm{SO}(p+1,p)\)-Higgs bundle in terms of its spectral data. The article gives also a natural stratification of the smooth loci of the moduli space of \(\mathrm{SO}(p+1,p)\)-Higgs bundles.