Witten's formulas for intersection pairings on moduli spaces of flat \(G\)-bundles (Q2570070)

For a compact, connected Lie group \(G\), let \(M(\Sigma)\) denote the moduli space of flat \(G\)-bundles over compact, connected, oriented surface of genus \(g\) (with boundary components) \(\Sigma\). There is also a holonomy condition around boundary components that we suppress here. For \(G=SU(n)\), Atiyah and Bott constructed certain cohomology classes in \(H^*(M(\Sigma))\) generating the cohomology ring. In 1992, Witten proposed general formulas (for any \(G\)) which compute intersection pairings for these classes. Jeffrey and Kirwan proved Witten's formulas for the original case and the present paper calculates the intersection pairings for any \(G\) using localization on smooth, compact, finite-dimensional manifolds and a localization formula for Hamiltonian \(G\)-spaces with group-valued moment map.