These are the lecture notes from my course in the January 2011 School on Moduli Spaces at the Newton Institute. I give an introduction to Higgs bundles and their application to the study of character varieties for surface group representations.
This is a survey article whose main goal is to explain how many components of the character variety of a closed surface are either deformation spaces of representations into the maximal compact subgroup or deformation spaces of certain Fuchsian repre
sentations. This latter family is of particular interest and is related to the field of higher Teichmuller theory. Our main tool is the theory of Higgs bundles. We try to develop the general theory of Higgs bundles for real groups and indicate where subtleties arise. However, the main emphasis is placed on concrete examples which are our motivating objects. In particular, we do not prove any of the foundational theorems, rather we state them and show how they can be used to prove interesting statements about components of the character variety. We have also not spent any time developing the tools (harmonic maps) which define the bridge between Higgs bundles and the character variety. For this side of the story we refer the reader to the survey article of Q. Li [arXiv:1809.05747].
This is a review article on some applications of generalised parabolic structures to the study of torsion free sheaves and $L$-twisted Hitchin pairs on nodal curves. In particular, we survey on the relation between representations of the fundamental
group of a nodal curve and the moduli spaces of generalised parabolic bundles and generalised parabolic $L$-twisted Hitchin pairs on its normalisation as well as on an analogue of the Hitchin map for generalised parabolic $L$-twisted Hitchin pairs.
Let $X$ be a compact connected Riemann surface, $D, subset, X$ a reduced effective divisor, $G$ a connected complex reductive affine algebraic group and $H_x, subsetneq, G_x$ a Zariski closed subgroup for every $x, in, D$. A framed principal $G$--bun
dle is a pair $(E_G,, phi)$, where $E_G$ is a holomorphic principal $G$--bundle on $X$ and $phi$ assigns to each $x, in, D$ a point of the quotient space $(E_G)_x/H_x$. A framed $G$--Higgs bundle is a framed principal $G$--bundle $(E_G,, phi)$ together with a section $theta, in, H^0(X,, text{ad}(E_G)otimes K_Xotimes{mathcal O}_X(D))$ such that $theta(x)$ is compatible with the framing $phi$ for every $x, in, D$. We construct a holomorphic symplectic structure on the moduli space $mathcal{M}_{FH}(G)$ of stable framed $G$--Higgs bundles. Moreover, we prove that the natural morphism from $mathcal{M}_{FH}(G)$ to the moduli space $mathcal{M}_{H}(G)$ of $D$-twisted $G$--Higgs bundles $(E_G,, theta)$ that forgets the framing, is Poisson. These results generalize cite{BLP} where $(G,, {H_x}_{xin D})$ is taken to be $(text{GL}(r,{mathbb C}),, {text{I}_{rtimes r}}_{xin D})$. We also investigate the Hitchin system for $mathcal{M}_{FH}(G)$ and its relationship with that for $mathcal{M}_{H}(G)$.
Some connected components of a moduli space are mundane in the sense that they are distinguished only by obvious topological invariants or have no special characteristics. Others are more alluring and unusual either because they are not detected by p
rimary invariants, or because they have special geometric significance, or both. In this paper we describe new examples of such `exotic components in moduli spaces of SO(p,q)-Higgs bundles on closed Riemann surfaces or, equivalently, moduli spaces of surface group representations into the Lie group SO(p,q). Furthermore, we discuss how these exotic components are related to the notion of positive Anosov representations recently developed by Guichard and Wienhard. We also provide a complete count of the connected components of these moduli spaces (except for SO(2,q), with q> 3).
We define and study the existence of very stable Higgs bundles on Riemann surfaces, how it implies a precise formula for the multiplicity of the very stable components of the global nilpotent cone and its relationship to mirror symmetry. The main ing
redients are the Bialynicki-Birula theory of ${mathbb C}^*$-actions on semiprojective varieties, ${mathbb C}^*$ characters of indices of ${mathbb C}^*$-equivariant coherent sheaves, Hecke transformation for Higgs bundles, relative Fourier-Mukai transform along the Hitchin fibration, hyperholomorphic structures on universal bundles and cominuscule Higgs bundles.