Stacky dualities for the moduli of Higgs bundles

Stacks and moduli problems (14D23) Geometric Langlands program (algebro-geometric aspects) (14D24) Jacobians, Prym varieties (14H40) Relationships between algebraic curves and physics (14H81)

Abstract: The central result of this paper is an identification of the shifted Cartier dual of the moduli stack

m a t h c a l M_{m a t h f r a k g} (C)

of

w i d e t i l d e G

-Higgs bundles on

C

of arbitrary degree (modulo shifts by

Z (w i d e t i l d e G)

) with a quotient of the Langlands dual stack

m a t h c a l M_{^{L} m a t h f r a k g} (C)

. Via hyperk"ahler rotation, this may equivalently be viewed as the identification of an SYZ fibration relating Hitchin systems for arbitrary Langlands dual semisimple groups, coupled to nontrivial finite

B

-fields. As a corollary certain self-dual stacks

f r a c m a t h c a l M_{m a t h f r a k g} (C) G a m m a

are observed to exist, which I conjecture to be the Coulomb branches for the 3d reduction of the 4d

m a t h c a l N = 2

theories of class

m a t h c a l S

.

Review text

The Langlands duality of Hitchin systems has long been known to correspond to a T-duality on the fibers. According to the SYZ conjecture, this T-duality realizes the mirror symmetry for certain 2d supersymmetric sigma models with Calabi-Yau target (equal to the Hitchin system for the case under review). Physically, the existence of this mirror symmetry is best predicted using the S-duality for \(4d\) \(\mathcal{N}=4\) super Yang-Mills theory, see e.g. [\textit{M. Bershadsky} et al., ``Topological reduction of 4D SYM to 2D \(\sigma \)-models, Nucl. Phys. B 448, No. 1--2, 166--186 (1995; \url{doi:10.1016/0550-3213(95)00242-K})]. Trying to make the T-duality statement mathematically precise, one encounters a number of obstacles such as making sense of stability and the gerby structures such as B-fields that arise from the physics. In the case of the ordinary Hitchin system of semistable Higgs bundles on a curve, the T-duality has been proved in [\textit{R. Donagi} and \textit{T. Pantev}, Invent. Math. 189, No. 3, 653--735 (2012; Zbl 1263.53078)]. For \(G=SL_n\) and \(G^\vee=PGL_n\), this case but with arbitrary fixed determinant and a nontrivial B-field was studied in [\textit{T. Hausel} and \textit{M. Thaddeus}, Invent. Math. 153, No. 1, 197--229 (2003; Zbl 1043.14011)]. The paper under review generalizes these results to arbitrary connected reductive groups, in particular allowing for nontrivial \(\mathbb{G}_m\)-gerbes and working (for the most part) with the full Hitchin stack. The T-duality result in the paper is also stated using the shifted Cartier duality, which works over more general base fields. Nevertheless, it should be noted that both the above references and the paper under review work entirely outside the discriminant locus of the Hitchin base/throw out the singular fibers. It is a major open problem to make sense of the statement for the singular fibers, with notable progress in recent years by Arinkin, Fedorov, Li, Yun, Groechenig-Wyss-Ziegler, etc. Another less severe restriction in the paper as well as in the work of Donagi-Pantev and Hausel-Thaddeus is the restriction of attention to Higgs fields valued in the canonical bundle. In addition to the mathematical results, there is a flow of ideas back to the physics. Carefully analyzing the case of a semisimple group and led by conjectures of \textit{Y. Tachikawa} [``On the 6d origin of discrete additional data of 4d gauge theories, J. High Energy Physics 2014, No. 5, Article ID 20, 18 p. (2014; \url{doi:10.1007/JHEP05(2014)020})] and known inconsistencies in the existing physics literature, the author also constructs a moduli space of Higgs bundles of ``arbitrary degree modulo the action of certain Hecke modifications, which is contemplated to be the right substitute for the Coulomb branch of a certain \(4d\) QFT, closely related to the ``theories of class S of \textit{D. Gaiotto} et al. [Adv. Math. 234, 239--403 (2013; Zbl 1358.81150)].

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