Uniformization of branched surfaces and Higgs bundles

Given a compact Riemann surface $Sigma$ of genus $g_Sigma, geq, 2$, and an effective divisor $D, =, sum_i n_i x_i$ on $Sigma$ with $text{degree}(D), <, 2(g_Sigma -1)$, there is a unique cone metric on $Sigma$ of constant negative curvature $-4$ such that the cone angle at each $x_i$ is $2pi n_i$ (see McOwen and Troyanov [McO,Tr]). We describe the Higgs bundle corresponding to this uniformization associated to the above conical metric. We also give a family of Higgs bundles on $Sigma$ parametrized by a nonempty open subset of $H^0(Sigma,,K_Sigma^{otimes 2}otimes{mathcal O}_Sigma(-2D))$ that correspond to conical metrics of the above type on moving Riemann surfaces. These are inspired by Hitchins results in [Hi1], for the case $D,=, 0$.