Degeneration of natural Lagrangians and Prymian integrable systems (Q2098227)

The aim of this paper is to extend the Donagi-Ein-Lazarsfeld [construction [\textit{R. Donagi} et al., Contemp. Math. 207, 51--61 (1997; Zbl 0907.32004)] to the case of a curve fitting in an arbitrary smooth projective surface, obtaining a degeneration of the moduli of pure dimension \(1\) sheaves on the surface into the moduli space of Higgs bundles on the curve, twisted by the normal bundle of the curve inside the surface. Starting from an anti-symplectic involution on a \(K3\) surface, one can consider a natural Lagrangian subvariety inside the moduli space of sheaves over the \(K3\). One can also construct a Prymian integrable system following a construction of \textit{D. Markushevich} and \textit{A. S. Tikhomirov} [Int. J. Math. 18, No. 10, 1187--1224 (2007; Zbl 1138.14032)], extended by \textit{E. Arbarello} et al. [J. Differ. Geom. 100, No. 2, 191--250 (2015; Zbl 1362.14035)] and \textit{J. Sawon} and \textit{C. Shen} [``Deformations of compact Prym fibrations to Hitchin systems'', Bull. London Math. Soc. 54, No. 5, 1568--1583 (2022; \url{doi:10.1112/blms.12643})]. In this paper the author addresses a question of Sawon, showing that these integrable systems and their associated natural Lagrangians degenerate, respectively, into fix loci of involutions considered by \textit{S. Heller} and \textit{L. P. Schaposnik} [J. Geom. Phys. 129, 279--293 (2018; Zbl 1388.81546)], \textit{O. Garcia-Prada} and \textit{G. Wilkin} [Doc. Math. 25, 841--868 (2020; Zbl 1451.14108)] and \textit{S. Basu} and \textit{O. García-Prada} [``Finite group actions on Higgs bundle moduli spaces and twisted equivariant structures'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2011.04017}]. Along the way he finds interesting results such as the proof that the Donagi-Ein-Lazarsfeld degeneration is a degeneration of symplectic varieties, a generalization of this degeneration, originally described for \(K3\) surfaces, to the case of an arbitrary smooth projective surface, and a description of the behaviour of certain involutions under this degeneration. This paper is organized as follows. The first section is an introduction to the subject and statement of the main results. The second section deals with some preliminaries and background which will be used in this paper. It contains generalities on the moduli space of pure dimension \(1\) sheaves on surfaces. The author studies the involutions on the moduli space naturally induced by pullback of involutions on the surface. He also studies the involution on the moduli space of pure dimension \(1\) sheaves induced by dualizing the restriction of a sheaf to its fitting support, the composition of this involution with a natural involution, and their fixed loci which is generically a fibration by Prym varieties. These involutions are considered starting from an anti-symplectic involution on a \(K3\) surface, revisiting the Markushevich-Tikhomirov construction of Prymian integrable systems. Also, he studies the Lagrangian subvarieties that arise from the fixed point locus of the natural involutions on the moduli constructed out of his anti-symplectic involution on the \(K3\) surface, and collects the necessary facts about ruled surfaces which will be used to study twisted Higgs bundles, whose spectral data provide a particularly relevant example of pure dimension \(1\) sheaves. The third section deals with certain involutions on moduli spaces of twisted Higgs bundles. The author describes some involutions on a ruled surface and study their relation with the Poisson structure. He constructs the corresponding involutions on the moduli spaces of spectral data of twisted Higgs bundles and studies their behaviour under the spectral correspondence. He obtains involutions on the moduli space of \(L\)-Higgs bundles, which in the particular case of the twisting by the canonical bundle, are involutions that have been widely studied by Heller-Schaposnik, García-Prada-Wilkin and Basu-García-Prada. The forth section concerns the main results of the paper. The author provides a generalization to the case of an arbitrary smooth projective surface of the Donagi-Ein-Lazarsfeld degeneration, originally described for \(K3\) surfaces. He obtains a degeneration of the moduli space of pure dimension \(1\) sheaves on a surface into the moduli spaces of Higgs bundles twisted by the normal bundle of a curve inside his surface. Also, he provides a deformation of the symplectic structure of the moduli spaces involved in the Donagi-Ein-Lazarsfeld degeneration in the case of symplectic surfaces, showing that it provides a degeneration of symplectic varieties. After studying the behaviour under the Donagi-Ein-Lazarsfeld degeneration of the involutions considered previously, he obtains a degeneration of the subvarieties described by their fixed loci. Next, the author provides an explicit description of such degenerations in the context of a \(K3\) surface equipped with an antisymplectic involution, and describes the non-linear degenerations of the Prymian integrable systems constructed by Arbarello-Saccà-Ferretti, Markushevich-Tikhomirov, Matteini and Sawon-Shen, showing that they degenerate into integrable systems related to the Hitchin system. He also describes the degeneration of the associated natural Lagrangian subvarieties. The fifth section considers the natural Lagrangian subvarieties and the Prymian integrable systems in the context of branes, and provides some evidence for their duality.