Compactification of moduli of Higgs bundles

In this paper we consider a canonical compactification of Hitchin's moduli space of stable Higgs bundles with fixed determinant of odd degree over a Riemann surface, producing a projective variety by gluing in a divisor at infinity. We give a detailed study of the compactified space, the diviso...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hausel, T
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 1998
Description
Summary:In this paper we consider a canonical compactification of Hitchin's moduli space of stable Higgs bundles with fixed determinant of odd degree over a Riemann surface, producing a projective variety by gluing in a divisor at infinity. We give a detailed study of the compactified space, the divisor at infinity and the moduli space itself. In doing so we reprove some assertions of Laumon and Thaddeus on the nilpotent cone.