Moduli spaces of parabolic U(p,q)U(p,q)-Higgs bundles

Using the $L^2$-norm of the Higgs field as a Morse function, we count the number of connected components of the moduli space of parabolic $U(p,q)$-Higgs bundles over a Riemann surface with a finite number of marked points, under certain genericity conditions on the parabolic structure. This space is homeomorphic to the moduli space of representations of the fundamental group of the punctured surface in $U(p,q)$, with fixed compact holonomy classes around the marked points. We apply our results to the study of representations of the fundamental group of elliptic surfaces of general type.Comment: 46 pages, no figures. Corrected typos, added remarks. To appear in "Quarterly Journal of Mathematics

Hodge polynomials of the SL(2, C)-character variety of an elliptic curve with two marked points

We compute the Hodge polynomials for the moduli space of representations of an elliptic curve with two marked points into SL(2, C). When we fix the conjugacy classes of the representations around the marked points to be diagonal and of modulus one, the character variety is diffeomorphic to the moduli space of strongly parabolic Higgs bundles, whose Betti numbers are known. In that case we can recover some of the Hodge numbers of the character variety. We extend this result to the moduli space of doubly periodic instantons

On character varieties of singular manifolds

In this paper, we construct a lax monoidal Topological Quantum Field Theory that computes virtual classes, in the Grothendieck ring of algebraic varieties, of $G$-representation varieties over manifolds with conic singularities, which we will call nodefolds. This construction is valid for any algebraic group $G$, in any dimension and also in the parabolic setting. In particular, this TQFT allow us to compute the virtual classes of representation varieties over complex singular planar curves. In addition, in the case $G = \mathrm{SL}_{2}(k)$, the virtual class of the associated character variety over a nodal closed orientable surface is computed both in the non-parabolic and in the parabolic scenarios.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figure

Revisiting the chiral effective action in holographic models

We obtain the pion decay constant and coefficients of fourth derivative terms in the chiral Lagrangian for massless quarks in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model. We extract these quantities from the two-pion scattering amplitude, which we compute directly in the holographic dual through tree-level Witten diagrams. Identification of the low energy coefficients in the chiral action is subtle as their values will be shifted when the tower of massive vector bosons are integrated out. Indeed, by a direct comparison with the existing standard procedure of constructing the chiral action with radial modes in the gravity dual, we explicitly show that there are finite 't Hooft coupling corrections that have been missed. This suggests that past derivations of effective actions from holographic models may have to be revisited and future derivations more carefully considered.Peer reviewe