Moduli of wild Higgs bundles on with -actions

Abstract

AbstractWe study a set $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ parameterising filtered SL(K)-Higgs bundles over $\mathbb{C}P^1$ with an irregular singularity at $z = \infty$, such that the eigenvalues of the Higgs field grow like $\vert \lambda \vert \sim \vert z^{N/K} \mathrm{d}z \vert$, where K and N are coprime. $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ carries a $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action analogous to the famous $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action introduced by Hitchin on the moduli spaces of Higgs bundles over compact curves. The construction of this $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action on $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ involves the rotation automorphism of the base $\mathbb{C}P^1$. We classify the fixed points of this $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action, and exhibit a curious 1-1 correspondence between these fixed points and certain representations of the vertex algebra $\mathcal{W}_K$ ; in particular we have the relation $\mu = {k-1-c_{\mathrm{eff}}}/{12}$ , where $\mu$ is a regulated version of the L2 norm of the Higgs field, and $c_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is the effective Virasoro central charge of the corresponding W-algebra representation. We also discuss a Białynicki–Birula-type decomposition of $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ , where the strata are labeled by isomorphism classes of the underlying filtered vector bundles.