INTERSECTION COHOMOLOGY OF RANK 2 CHARACTER VARIETIES OF SURFACE GROUPS

For $G = \mathrm {GL}_2, \mathrm {SL}_2, \mathrm {PGL}_2$ we compute the intersection E-polynomials and the intersection Poincaré polynomials of the G-character variety of a compact Riemann surface C and of the moduli space of G-Higgs bundles on C of degree zero. We derive several results concerning the P=W conjectures for these singular moduli spaces.

Topological mirror symmetry for rank two character varieties of surface groups

The moduli spaces of flat $${\text{SL}}_2$$ SL 2 - and $${\text{PGL}}_2$$ PGL 2 -connections are known to be singular SYZ-mirror partners. We establish the equality of Hodge numbers of their intersection (stringy) cohomology. In rank two, this answers a question raised by Tamás Hausel in Remark 3.30 of “Global topology of the Hitchin system”.

Compact connected components in relative character varieties of punctured spheres

We prove that some relative character varieties of the fundamental group of a punctured sphere into the Hermitian Lie groups $\mathrm{SU}(p,q)$ admit compact connected components. The representations in these components have several counter-intuitive properties. For instance, the image of any simple closed curve is an elliptic element. These results extend a recent work of Deroin and the first author, which treated the case of $\textrm{PU}(1,1) = \mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{R})$. Our proof relies on the non-Abelian Hodge correspondance between relative character varieties and parabolic Higgs bundles. The examples we construct admit a rather explicit description as projective varieties obtained via Geometric Invariant Theory.

Defects, nested instantons and comet-shaped quivers

We introduce and study a surface defect in four-dimensional gauge theories supporting nested instantons with respect to the parabolic reduction of the gauge group at the defect. This is engineered from a $$\mathrm{{D3/D7}}$$ D 3 / D 7 -branes system on a non-compact Calabi–Yau threefold X. For $$X=T^2\times T^*{{\mathcal {C}}}_{g,k}$$ X = T 2 × T ∗ C g , k , the product of a two torus $$T^2$$ T 2 times the cotangent bundle over a Riemann surface $${{\mathcal {C}}}_{g,k}$$ C g , k with marked points, we propose an effective theory in the limit of small volume of $${\mathcal C}_{g,k}$$ C g , k given as a comet-shaped quiver gauge theory on $$T^2$$ T 2 , the tail of the comet being made of a flag quiver for each marked point and the head describing the degrees of freedom due to the genus g. Mathematically, we obtain for a single $$\mathrm{{D7}}$$ D 7 -brane conjectural explicit formulae for the virtual equivariant elliptic genus of a certain bundle over the moduli space of the nested Hilbert scheme of points on the affine plane. A connection with elliptic cohomology of character varieties and an elliptic version of modified Macdonald polynomials naturally arises.