Approximate Hermitian-Yang-Mills structures and semistability for Higgs bundles. I: Generalities and the one-dimensional case (Q1759456)

For a Higgs bundle on a compact Riemann surface, the author shows the correspondence between the existence of approximate Hermitian-Yang-Mills structures and the notion of semistability. To prove this, he uses a Donaldson functional approach analogous to that of Kobayashi. This generalizes the classical case when the Higgs field is zero. Furthermore, he defines the Donaldson functional for Higgs bundles over compact Kähler manifolds and investigates certain properties of the solutions of the evolution equation associated with this functional. Finally, he introduces the Donaldson functional for an admissible Hermitian structure on a torsion-free Higgs sheaf.