Abelianization of Fuchsian systems on a 4-punctured sphere and applications (Q508084)

This paper is concerned with Fuchsian systems on the \(4\)-punctured sphere \(M=\mathbb C P^1\setminus\{z_0,z_1,z_2,z_3\}\); these are systems of differential equations whose solutions are parallel \(2\)-forms on \(M\) with appropriate poles at the punctures. By developing an explicit abelianization procedure for such systems, the authors establish a correspondence between such systems and flat line bundle connections on the \(2\)-torus. The main application given is an alternative proof of Witten's formula for the symplectic volume of the moduli space of unitary flat connections on \(M\).