Convergence of Yang-Mills-Higgs flow for twist Higgs pairs on Riemann surfaces (Q477147)

The article considers the gradient flow of the Yang-Mills-Higgs functional on a hermitian vector bundle \((E,H)\) over a Riemanian surface \(X\), where the holomorphic Higgs field is twisted with a fixed holomorphic line bundle. The gradient flow for the untwisted case, more precisely existence, uniqueness and convergence of the flow, is already known in the literature [\textit{G. Wilkin}, Commun. Anal. Geom. 16, No. 2, 283--332 (2008; Zbl 1151.58010)]. These results are extended by the author to the twisted case. It is shown that the gradient flow converges and that the Harder-Narasimhan type of the limit is the same as of the initial data. Moreover, a characterization of the limit in terms of the Harder-Narasimhan-Seshadri filtration is presented.