Representations of the fundamental group of a closed oriented surface in Sp(4, R)

DOI10.1016/J.TOP.2003.10.010MaRDI QIDQ1876208zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Ignasi Mundet i Riera, Oscar García-Prada

Publication date 16 August 2004

Published in Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0304027

zbMATH Keywords

Higgs bundlesRiemann surfaces

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Algebraic moduli problems, moduli of vector bundles (14D20) Homotopy theory and fundamental groups in algebraic geometry (14F35) Vector bundles on curves and their moduli (14H60) Complex-analytic moduli problems (32G13)

Abstract: We classify the connected components of the space of representations of the fundamental group of a closed oriented surface of genus $geq2$ in $Sp(4,mathbfR)$. We prove that this is equivalent to classifying the connected components of the moduli space of representations (which consists of conjugacy classes of reductive representations). We then continue the analysis initiated by Gothen in math/9904114, relying on: (1) the relation between our moduli space of representations and the moduli space of certain (polystable) analogues of Higgs bundles (which follows essentially from work of Hitchin, Simpson and Corlette) and (2) the existence of a proper function on the moduli space whose set of local minima can be identified with the moduli space $N$ of (polystable) quadratic bundles of rank 2; we finally deduce our result from the classification of the connected components of $N$.

Review text

The authors study the number of connected components of the space of representations of the fundamental group of a closed oriented surface in \(\text{Sp}(4, \mathbb R)\), and prove that the moduli space of representations has the same number of connected components as the representation space. More precisely, let \(X\) be a closed oriented surface of genus \(g \geq 2\). Let \(\mathcal X\) be the set of representations of the fundamental group \(\pi_1(X)\) in \(\text{Sp}(4, \mathbb R)\). Given a representation \(\rho \in \mathcal X\), there is an integer associated to it, which is called the degree of \(\rho\). Let \(\mathcal X(d)\) (respectively, \(\mathcal X(d)^+\)) be the subset of \(\mathcal X\) consisting of all the representations (respectively, reductive representations) of degree \(d\). The moduli space of representations of degree \(d\) is defined to be \(\mathcal R(d) = \mathcal X(d)^+/\text{Sp}(4, \mathbb R)\) where \(\text{Sp}(4, \mathbb R)\) acts on \(\mathcal X(d)^+\) by conjugation. The main result in this paper states that if \(0 < | d| < 2g-2\), then both \(\mathcal X(d)\) and \(\mathcal R(d)\) are connected. The idea is to use the fact that \(\mathcal R(d)\) is homeomorphic to the moduli space \(\mathcal M(d)\) of polystable \(\text{Sp}(4, \mathbb R)\)-Higgs bundles. When \(0 < | d| < 2g-2\), the moduli space \(\mathcal M(d)\) is shown to be connected.

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Cited in

(20)

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• Higgs bundles for the non-compact dual of the special orthogonal group
• Maximal \(\mathsf{Sp}(4,\mathbb R)\) surface group representations, minimal immersions and cyclic surfaces
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• Representations of surface groups in the projective general linear group
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• Higgs bundles for the Lorentz group
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• Components of spaces of representations and stable triples.
• The non-abelian Hodge correspondence on some non-Kähler manifolds
• On the existence of harmonic metrics on non‐Hermitian Yang–Mills bundles
• Global properties of Higgs bundle moduli spaces
• Rank two quadratic pairs and surface group representations
• Morse theory, Higgs fields, and Yang-Mills-Higgs functionals
• A general Cayley correspondence and higher rank Teichmüller spaces
• Hermitian-Poisson metrics on projectively flat complex vector bundles over non-compact Gauduchon manifolds
• Fundamental group of moduli spaces of representations
• Higgs bundles and higher Teichmüller spaces
• Maximal surface group representations in isometry groups of classical Hermitian symmetric spaces

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