Counting twisted Higgs bundles (Q6042862)

A formula for the computation of the number of points of the moduli space of semi-stable twisted Higgs bundles over a smooth projective curve defined over a finite field, was conjectured by the first author in [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2012, No. 18, 4218--4244 (2012; Zbl 1262.14015)]. The aim of this paper is to prove this explicit formula, counting semi-stable twisted Higgs bundles over a smooth projective curve. This paper is organized as follows: Section 1 is an introduction to the subject. Preliminaries are given in Section 2. In Section 3 the authors consider positive Higgs bundles, review the formula from [\textit{S. Mozgovoy} and \textit{O. Schiffmann}, Compos. Math. 156, No. 4, 744--769 (2020; Zbl 1514.14011)] counting positive Higgs bundles, and simplify it using an approach from [\textit{A. Mellit}, Invent. Math. 221, No. 1, 301--327 (2020; Zbl 1455.14022)]. Section 4 is devoted to the main result obtained in this paper.