Shatz and Bialynicki-Birula stratifications of the moduli space of Higgs bundles (Q2134174)

Recall that a Higgs bundle over a compact Riemann surface \(X\) of genus \(g\geq2\), is a pair \((E, \varphi)\) where \(E\) is a holomorphic vector bundle over \(X\) and \(\varphi\) is a homomorphism of vector bundles \(\varphi:E \longrightarrow E\otimes K\), \(K\) being the canonical line bundle over \(X\). The aim of this paper is to study how two memorable stratifications of the moduli space of Higgs bundles of rank \(4\) over \(X\), Shatz stratification and Bialynicki-Birula stratification, relate to each other and provide dimensions for the Harder-Narasimhan type of a semistable rank \(4\) Higgs bundle over \(X\). In particular, the author proves that the two stratifications do not coincide. Thus, he extends to rank \(4\) the work of \textit{T. Hausel} [Geometry of Higgs bundles. Cambridge University (PhD Thesis) (1998)], who proved that both stratifications coincide in rank \(2\), and of \textit{P. B. Gothen} and \textit{R. A. Zúñiga-Rojas} [Port. Math. (N.S.) 74, No. 2, 127--148 (2017; Zbl 1386.14125)], who proved that such a thing no longer occurred in rank \(3\). This paper is organized as follows: The first section is an introduction to the subject. In Section 2 the author introduces the notion of Higgs bundle over a compact Riemann surface, introduces the notions of stability, semistability and polystability for these objects, introduces the moduli space of Higgs bundles with fixed rank and degree and explains the basics of Shatz and Bialynicki-Birula stratifications of the moduli space of Higgs bundles. Some bounds for the Harder-Narasimhan type of semistable Higgs bundles in rank \(r\geq3\) are given in Section 3. In Section 4 he describes the limits \(\lim_{z\rightarrow0}(E, z\varphi)\) for any semistable rank \(4\) Higgs bundle in terms of the Harder-Narasimhan type of the Higgs bundle. Finally, Section 5 is devoted to establishing some notable consequences of the main results of the paper on the relationship between Shatz and Bialynicki-Birula stratifications.