Construction of the moduli space of Higgs bundles using analytic methods (Q2687153)

The author deals with some problems related to the construction of the moduli space of Higgs bundles using analytic methods. Recall that a Higgs bundle on a closed Riemann surface \(X\) (with genus \(g\geq2\)) was introduced by \textit{N. J. Hitchin} in the seminal paper [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 55, 59--126 (1987; Zbl 0634.53045)]. It is a pair \((\mathcal{E},\Phi)\) consisting of a holomorphic bundle \(\mathcal{E}\longrightarrow X\) and a holomorphic section \(\Phi\in H^0(\mbox{End }\mathcal{E}\otimes\mathcal{K}_X)\), where \(\mathcal{K}_X\) is the canonical bundle of \(X\). It is well known that the Kuranishi slice method can be used to construct the moduli space of semistable Higgs bundles on a closed Riemann surface as a complex space [\textit{S. B. Bradlow} and \textit{G. Wilkin}, J. Fixed Point Theory Appl. 11, No. 1, 1--41 (2012; Zbl 1267.58010); \textit{R. A. Wentworth}, in: Geometry and quantization of moduli spaces. Based on 4 courses, Barcelona, Spain, March -- June 2012. Basel: Birkhäuser/Springer. 165--219 (2016; Zbl 1388.30052)]. The aim of this paper is to give a proof in detail of this result. The author also gives a direct proof that the moduli space is locally modeled on an affine GIT (or geometric invariant theory) quotient of a quadratic cone by a complex reductive group. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 is an introduction to the subject. In Section 2, after reviewing the deformation complex for Higgs bundles, the author introduces another useful Fredholm complex that will be used later. Section 3 is devoted to Kuranishi local models. A crucial ingredient in the Kuranishi slice method is the Kuranishi maps. Here the author deals with some questions concerning Kuranishi maps, perturbed Kuranishi maps and open embeddings into the moduli space. Section 4 deals with gluing local models. Section 5 deals with singularities in Kuranishi spaces. In this section, the author shows that Kuranishi spaces have only cone singularities. Section 6 is devoted to comparison with the algebraic construction.