A physical origin for singular support conditions in geometric Langlands theory (Q2415347)

In [Commun. Number Theory Phys. 1, No. 1, 1--236 (2007; Zbl 1128.22013)] \textit{A. Kapustin} and \textit{E. Witten} defined a 4d \(\mathcal{N}=4\) B-twisted supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge group \(G\) that gives a physical motivation for the geometric Langlands program. Later Arinkin-Gaitsgory refined it by adding a nilpotent singular support condition (NSSC). The main goal of this paper is to detail the connection to physics mathematically, and give a derived algebraic geometry interpretation of NSSC. Speaking abstractly, the authors work within the perturbative TQFT framework of Costello-Gwilliam featuring factorization algebras. They add a dg \(\infty\)-category \(\mathcal{B}\), whose objects are interpreted as boundary conditions, and the Hilbert space of the theory with two boundary conditions is represented by the hom-space of morphisms between the corresponding objects. This category is further equipped with an action of \(\mathbb{E}_n\) algebra \(\mathcal{A}\) of local observables. For the Kapustin-Witten case \(\mathcal{B}\) is the category of ind-coherent sheaves (compactly generated by all coherent complexes) on the moduli stack of flat \(G^\vee\) bundles over a Riemann surface. Arinkin-Gaitsgory showed that its smallest subcategory where all geometric Eisenstein functors are well-behaved consists exactly of objects satisfying NSSC. The authors then observe that full subcategories of \(\mathcal{B}\) can be picked out by selecting objects with a point \(v\in\textrm{Spec }\mathcal{A}\) in their support. This point defines a functional on \(\mathcal{A}\) that can be physically interpreted as a vacuum state, and the boundary conditions supported on it are interpreted as compatible with this vacuum. In the case of ind-coherent sheaves boundary conditions compatible with a given vacuum can be characterized by a condition on their singular support. The moduli space of vacua of the Kapustin-Witten theory is equivalent to \(\mathfrak{h}^*/W\), where \(\mathfrak{h}\) is the Cartan subalgebra of the Lie algebra of \(G\), and \(W\) is the Weyl group, and the algebra of local observables \(\mathcal{O}(\mathfrak{h}^*/W)\) acts canonically on the ind-coherent sheaves. The main result is that the boundary conditions satisfying NSSC are exactly the ones compatible with the vacuum \(0\in\mathfrak{h}^*/W\). Near the end the authors investigate what happens when the vacuum is not \(0\), and conjecture that one still gets geometric Langlands categories, but with the gauge symmetry group broken to a Levi subgroup. This is verified when the underlying Riemann surface is \(\mathbb{P}^1\). They further conjecture that these categories satisfy a natural factorization condition on the moduli space of vacua related to the factorization structures on cohomological Hall algebras studied by Kontsevich and Soibelman.