Representations of the fundamental group and Higgs bundles on singular integral curves (Q2672050)

This article extends previous results by the author [Math. Ann. 302, No. 4, 601--608 (1995; Zbl 0842.14024); \textit{U. N. Bhosle} et al., Bull. Sci. Math. 138, No. 1, 41--62 (2014; Zbl 1288.14020)] on Narasimhan-Seshadri correspondences between (unitary) representations of the fundamental group of a nodal curve and (vector) Higgs/Hitchin bundles, to singular curves with cusps and ordinary \(r\)-points. After the introduction in section 1, section 2 defines Hitchin pairs \((E, \phi)\) on an integral projective curve, where \(E\) is a torsion free sheaf on \(Y\) and \(\phi:E\rightarrow E\otimes L\), \(L\) being a torsion free rank \(1\) sheaf on \(Y\) (a Higgs bundle when \(E\) is locally free and \(L\) is the dualizing sheaf and invertible). The data of the singularities together with the normalization of \(Y\) yield the notions of generalized parabolic Hitchin pairs and modules (Definitions 2.5 and 2.7) providing the adequate moduli spaces for the problem to study (Theorem 2.13). Section 3 shows, for cuspidal curves, that the universal categorical quotient of unitary representations plus data coming from the singularities by the conjugation relation is identified with a dense subset of the moduli space of semistable torsion free sheaves of rank \(n\) and degree \(0\) (Theorem 3.7) and the analog for representations in the general linear group with the moduli of semistable generalized parabolic Hitchin bundles (Theorem 3.9). Section 4 extends these results to more general singularities (Theorems 4.6, 4.7, 4.9 and 4.10).