Geometry, Topology and Dynamics Seminar
Brian Collier
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Maximal SO(2,3) surface group representations and Labourie's conjecture
Abstract: The nonabelian Hodge correspondence provides a homeomorphism between the character variety of surface group representations into a real Lie group G and the moduli space of G-Higgs bundles. This homeomorphism however breaks the natural mapping class group action on the character variety. Generalizing techniques and conjectures of Labourie for Hitchin representations, we restore the mapping class group symmetry for all maximal SO(2, 3) = PSp(4, R) surface group representations. More precisely, we show that for each maximal SO(2, 3) representation there is a unique conformal structure in which the corresponding equivariant harmonic map to the symmetric space is a conformal immersion, or, equivalently, a minimal immersion. This is done by exploiting finite order fixed point properties of the associated maximal Higgs bundles.
Monday September 14, 2015 at 3:00 PM in SEO 636