Minimal submanifolds from the abelian Higgs model

Given a Hermitian line bundle $Lto M$ over a closed, oriented Riemannian manifold $M$, we study the asymptotic behavior, as $epsilonto 0$, of couples $(u_epsilon, abla_epsilon)$ critical for the rescalings begin{align*} &E_epsilon(u, abla)=int_MBig(| abla u|^2+epsilon^2|F_ abla|^2+frac{1}{4epsilon^2}(1-|u|^2)^2Big) end{align*} of the self-dual Yang-Mills-Higgs energy, where $u$ is a section of $L$ and $ abla$ is a Hermitian connection on $L$ with curvature $F_{ abla}$. Under the natural assumption $limsup_{epsilonto 0}E_epsilon(u_epsilon, abla_epsilon)<infty$, we show that the energy measures converge subsequentially to (the weight measure $mu$ of) a stationary integral $(n-2)$-varifold. Also, we show that the $(n-2)$-currents dual to the curvature forms converge subsequentially to $2piGamma$, for an integral $(n-2)$-cycle $Gamma$ with $|Gamma|lemu$. Finally, we provide a variational construction of nontrivial critical points $(u_epsilon, abla_epsilon)$ on arbitrary line bundles, satisfying a uniform energy bound. As a byproduct, we obtain a PDE proof, in codimension two, of Almgrens existence result of (nontrivial) stationary integral $(n-2)$-varifolds in an arbitrary closed Riemannian manifold.