Very stable and wobbly loci for elliptic curves
Abstract.
We explore very stable and wobbly bundles, twisted in a particular sense by a line bundle, over complex algebraic curves of genus . We verify that twisted stable bundles on an elliptic curve are not very stable for any positive twist. We utilize semistability of trivially twisted very stable bundles to prove that the wobbly locus is always a divisor in the moduli space of semistable bundles on a genus curve. We prove, by extension, a conjecture regarding the closedness and dimension of the wobbly locus in this setting. This conjecture was originally formulated by Drinfeld in higher genus.
1. Statement of results
Laumon introduced very stable bundles, proving that the very stable locus is an open dense subset in the moduli space of stable bundles [12]. Hausel subsequently studied [8] the global nilpotent cone for -Higgs bundles with a fixed determinant line bundle of degree on a curve of genus . The zero set of the determinant morphism (valued in global sections of ) contains the moduli of stable bundles of rank with fixed determinant , as an open subset. The inclusion is simply . This nilpotent cone coincides with the downward Morse flow of the moduli space of Higgs bundles (cf. [8], Theorem 4.4.2). The wobbly locus is the collection of stable bundles that admit a nonzero nilpotent Higgs field. This definition of the wobbly locus was exploited by Pal and Pauly [20], who investigated the irreducible components of the wobbly locus in order to prove a conjecture that Laumon attributes to Drinfeld in [12]. The claim is that the wobbly locus is a closed subset of pure codimension . In a separate paper [19], Pal proves Drinfeld’s conjecture in arbitrary rank. However, the irreducible components are not easily understood for higher ranks because we lose access to useful information about their dimensions. In spite of this, Pauly and Peón-Nieto realized the importance of locating a very stable bundle via the sections of its twisted endomorphism bundle (cf. [21]), imposing a condition of properness and appealing to the semiprojectivity of the moduli space. More recently, Hausel and Hitchin [9] introduced very stable Higgs bundles by appealing to the upward flow of -action on the moduli space of Higgs bundles.
Working in this context, we focus on curves of genus and . It is common to investigate moduli spaces of parabolic Higgs bundles on such curves; however, instead of puncturing the curve at certain marked points and maintaining the canonical line bundle as the sheaf of values of the Higgs field, we keep the curve compact but allow the Higgs field to take values in any line bundle . We say that the Higgs field is twisted by or, accordingly, that is the twist of the Higgs field. Thus far, we have not encountered literature concerning very stable and wobbly loci in this twisted setting. In order to characterize very stable and wobbly bundles here, we shall need to rely on several well-known results about the geometry of symmetric products of a smooth projective curve. For sufficiently large , the -fold symmetric product of a curve , , can be realized as a projective bundle over . Carefully studying for arbitrary curves and any , Macdonald [13] computed their Betti numbers and the cohomological invariants of their closed subvarieties. Hitchin [10] and Gothen [6] utilized the now classical Macdonald’s formula for the Betti numbers of to compute Poincaré polynomials of moduli spaces of stable Higgs bundles for ranks up to and including on curves of genus . In a context close the spirit of the present manuscript, a similar application of thi formula was used to compute Betti numbers of moduli spaces of -type quiver bundles in low genus, as a means to accessing similar results for twisted Higgs bundle moduli spaces at genus and [23]. We refer the reader to [22] for more on these subjects. In our methods, we will rely on Macdonald’s formula in at least one major step. Our techniques also depend intrinsically upon results about divisors in symmetric products as per, for example, [11, 14, 1].
Now, we will establish some of the basic notation required to state our results. Let us continue to use to denote a smooth complex algebraic curve; likewise, continues to denote a choice of holomorphic line bundle on . Let be a holomorphic vector bundle of rank so that the only nilpotent element is . Such a bundle is said to be an -very stable bundle. We call a bundle -wobbly if it is not -very stable. We will refer the -very stable (respectively, the -wobbly) bundles to very stable (respectively, wobbly) if the twist line bundle is well understood from the context. In particular, we call a bundle canonically very stable (respectively, canonically wobbly) if is the canonical line bundle on . In the literature of which we are aware, the canonically very stable bundles are referred as “very stable bundles”. We remark that any line bundle is immediately very stable, while a general bundle is -very stable if and only if is very stable for a line bundle . Indeed if and only if where denotes the identity morphism. From the vantage point of linear algebra, the strictly upper triangular and strictly lower triangular matrices are the first examples of nilpotent elements, and the construction of nilpotent bundle morphisms begins in the same way. One may, in low genus, exploit the wealth of known information about holomorphic bundles and their maps — for example, the Birkhoff-Grothendieck splitting when working in genus — to create globally strictly triangular morphisms as needed.
In service to stating our main results, let us fix the definitions of the very stable and wobbly loci, recognizing that very stable bundles are semistable for a twist of sufficiently large degree. This follows after the assumption of property (2) in Lemma 2.2.2. Below, denotes the moduli space of semistable rank , degree bundles on .
Definition 1.0.1.
The subsets of consisting, respectively, of -very stable and -wobbly bundles are, respectively, the very stable locus and the wobbly locus. We denote these by the symbols and , respectively.
We now state the main theorem that will be developed in later sections.
Theorem 1.
Let be a complex elliptic curve, let be an integer greater than or equal to , let be any integer, and let denote the set of isomorphism classes of indecomposable bundles of rank and degree on .
-
(1)
Any holomorphic bundle is canonically wobbly. A stable bundle , should one exist, is canonically very stable. A polystable bundle , where the summands have equal slopes, is canonically very stable if and only if for all .
-
(2)
Let be a twist of degree . A bundle is -very stable if and only if .
-
(3)
Let be a twist with a degree . A stable bundle is -wobbly.
-
(4)
If , then the canonically wobbly locus forms a closed irreducible subvariety of codimension inside , and hence is a divisor.
-
(5)
The first Chern class of the wobbly divisor is for some generators .
Acknowledgements. The authors thank Christian Pauly for preliminary discussions on this subject after a lecture of his during the Workshop on the Geometry, Algebra, and Physics of Higgs Bundles (23w5082). The workshop, which was co-organized by the second-named author, took place at the Kelowna site of the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) in May-June 2023. Both authors thank the BIRS Kelowna team for providing a hospitable environment for mathematical collaboration as well as the other organizers — Lara Anderson, Antoine Bourget, and Laura Schaposnik — for their scientific and logistical efforts. The second-named author acknowledges Eloise Hamilton for a continuing discourse around twisted Higgs bundles in low genus that was advanced in a significant way at the same venue. The second-named author was partially supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant during this work. The first-named author was supported by a University of Saskatchewan Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF).
2. Very stable and wobbly bundles
2.1. Twisted global nilpotent cone on
As a warm-up exercise we first focus on . If there does not exist any -very stable bundle over . It is enough to check the statement for . Let . Then either or . Furthermore, without loss of any generality, we can take . Define
(2.1.1) |
Here, is a nonzero section of a line bundle, appearing as a global component of . This is a non-zero nilpotent Higgs field.
Proposition 2.1.1.
Let ; then, a bundle is -very stable if and only if
Proof.
Supposing satisfies the inequality from the statement, we necessarily have
That is, for all . As a consequence, is zero and very stability of is confirmed. Let us consider the other direction now. In case there exists so that , then . We choose a section . Construct by inserting at the -th (or the -th) entry of a matrix, based on an ordered choice of a global basis; furthermore, place everywhere else so that is nilpotent. We also remark that the differences of any two Grothendieck numbers of a -very stable bundle are bounded and a semistable bundle is -very stable. ∎
2.2. Stable versus very stable bundles
The following results are well known, but we outline their proofs.
Lemma 2.2.1.
Let be vector bundles on a curve satisfying an exact sequence
and be a line bundle on such that . Then is not very stable. Conversely, if is an -wobbly bundle of rank with a nonzero nilpotent element then there exists a line subbundle such that .
Proof.
Let denote a nonzero bundle morphism . According to the following diagram we can choose which satisfies .
(2.2.1) |
Assume that such that and . Then we choose considering as a homomorphism of locally free sheaves. In a similar diagram as above taking we obtain a diagram where will be a well-defined bundle morphism due to and exactness of the following sequence of bundles
∎
Lemma 2.2.2.
Let be a smooth complex curve.
-
(1)
If is semistable and then is -very stable.
-
(2)
Let be a curve with genus and be a line bundle with . An -very stable bundle is slope-semistable. In particular, implies is slope-stable.
Proof.
To prove the first statement we claim that . Choose, if possible, a nonzero . As a morphism of sheaves can not be injective because we must respect the obvious inequality . So we apply the semistability condition on the subbundle and on the saturated subbundle of contained in , to arrive at the contradiction that .
To prove the latter statement we choose a slope-destabilizing subbundle of , that is, . We claim that under this assumption. Observe that
(2.2.2) |
Appealing to Riemann-Roch formula we obtain
According to the proof we see that under the assumption we can replace slope-semistability with slope-stability. Here we have the following inequality
(2.2.3) |
Even if and we obtain stability of an -very stable bundle. ∎
2.3. Additivity and multiplicativity of vector bundles on an elliptic curve
The crux of Atiyah’s work is the exploration of indecomposable bundles and their multiplicative structures on elliptic curves. Tu organizes necessary information about the moduli of stable and semistable bundles out of Atiyah’s construction of indecomposable bundles. Moreover, they computed the respective cohomology groups of such moduli space of bundles. We collect a list of useful results (with some changes in language) from both papers ([2] and [25]) in service to the readers.
A point on an elliptic curve gives rise to a unique line bundle so that every nonzero section of vanishes at . This is an isomorphism of complex manifolds (between the elliptic curve and its Picard variety of degree ), usually called the Abel-Jacobi map. There is an isomorphism by . Commonly the elements of a symmetric product of a curve are well defined divisors of the degree same as the power of the symmetric product. We will use the description of as the collection of effective divisors interchangeably with the classical definition. More generally, there is a holomorphic Abel-Jacobi map assigning a divisor of points on to its corresponding line bundle of degree . The tangent and the cotangent (canonical) bundles on are isomorphic to the trivial line bundle .
-
(1)
(The Uniqueness Theorem) Let with . Then (i) when and or when , (ii) if , there is a trivial subbundle of while is indecomposable with .
-
(2)
(Existence Theorem) Let with and if let . Then there exists a bundle unique up to isomorphism, given by an extension
where and when and when .
-
(3)
(Extensions of indecomposable bundles of degree ) There exists a vector bundle with that fits into an exact sequence
and a bundle is of the form for some -torsion element . The bundle is self dual i.e and if and only if .
-
(4)
(Indecomposable bundles with nonzero degrees) Let be mutually prime integers. Then is uniquely identified with its determinant . Suppose that is a chosen base point. There is a unique bundle so that we are able to identify as . To be precise, is the unique indecomposable bundle of rank and degree that admits determinant . Moreover,
Even if and admit the greatest common divisor , a bundle is uniquely defined by a bijective correspondence between and . Related results are generalized with step by step reductions to the ‘mutually prime’ cases.
-
(5)
(Multiplicative structures) If the bundle decomposes as a finite direct sum of bundles ’s. If are mutually prime integers then
is indecomposable for any integer . For chosen mutually prime pairs of integers and so that are mutually prime we have
-
(6)
(Semistability of indecomposable bundles) For a chosen base point in , the canonical indecomposable bundle is semistable for any . If and and then is strictly semistable from the following exact sequence of bundles
This confirms stability of precisely if and are mutually prime. In particular, is semistable for all .
-
(7)
(Decomposable semistable bundles) Set and . Every semistable bundle of rank and degree on is strongly equivalent to a bundle of the form
where with . There is an isomorphism .
-
(8)
(Semistable bundles and symmetric products of an elliptic curve) Let the moduli space of (grading equivalent) semistable and the moduli space of (isomorphic) stable bundles of rank and degree on an elliptic curve be denoted with and respectively. Suppose that is the greatest common divisor of and . Then
and
-
(9)
There is a commutative diagram
(2.3.1) In short we explain the commutative diagram as following. Choose an element in and represent it in two ways, first as a bundle each with the same rank and the same degree and take its determinant . Then consider the same element as a divisor and consider the line bundle . These two line bundles differ by a tensor product of a power of so that .
-
(10)
. Denote the semistable bundles of a fixed determinant . Then . We derive it from the fact that a fiber of the Abel-Jacobi map is the projectivization of the linear system of effective divisors of .
3. Very stable and wobbly loci
3.1. Characterization of very stable and wobbly bundles
We first consider and manage any other degree through adjusting via the division algorithm. We handle the indecomposable bundles at first then the case of the decomposable ones.
Remark 3.1.1.
We should be attentive to specific marginal cases. On an elliptic curve a trivially (or canonically) twisted very stable bundle is semistable but it does not necessarily define a point in the moduli space of semistable bundles and yields no information surrounding the very stable locus. Hence we should work out the case of decomposable (polystable) bundles to establish a few topological results of the very stable locus (or the wobbly locus) while handling separately the case of the indecomposable bundles. The same comment makes sense for any twist of degree .
-
(1)
Let . For a twist we have is -very stable due to the fact that is semistable. However a more elementary argument is available at our exposure, utilizing the fact that there exists an element so that . Decompose
(3.1.1) in to indecomposable components and observe that since is indecomposable with a negative degree (cf. [3] Lemma 3.19) we arrive at . Hence is -very stable.∎
Next we choose a twist as or we apply Lemma 2.2.1 on the exact sequence(3.1.2) whereas . We conclude that is -wobbly.∎
-
(2)
Now we consider . For we have is -very stable once again as is semistable (Lemma 2.2.1).∎
Choose a twist with . We focus on a line bundle so that . We derive that is -wobbly. Choose an exact sequence(3.1.3) We remark that may decompose in to bundles of smaller ranks. The inequality implies . We obtain
(3.1.4) By 2.2.1 we have is -wobbly via Riemann-Roch.∎
Let . We choose the rank and the degree of so that . The exactly same reasoning is -wobbly. We sharpen our reasoning to investigate the -very stable pairs in the case of . At first we focus at . Suppose that is a rank bundle of degree with determinant . Due to its stability each line subbundle admits a degree . In particular, there is an exact sequence of bundles(3.1.5) If admits a line subbundle such that then is -wobbly. If such a line subbundle does not exist then is -very stable due to 2.2.1. In general we use the exact sequence
(3.1.6) where is a degree line bundle isomorphic to the determinant of . If we can conclude is -wobbly which confirms that the -wobbly locus in is nonempty. We frame a relevant conjecture 3.1.2 in this context. We further choose the twist . If then is stable, thus simple and obviously very stable. However, if a bundle is not necessarily stable and may or may not admit a nonzero nilpotent Higgs field. We handle such bundles up to a grading equivalent polystable bundle in Remark 3.1.4.∎
Conjecture 3.1.2.
Consider the holomorphic one-to-one correspondence
The set of -very stable locus is an open dense subset for .
Remark 3.1.3.
we are yet to settle very stability of bundles for a nontrivial twist . For we focus on two particular cases: either is an -torsion element in with order or not an -torsion element. Suppose that admits order and is a bundle of rank and admitting a nonzero determinant . It is easy to derive that
is an isomorphism of bundles. Assuming moreover that is stable we conclude that is -very stable. On the other hand is very stable if and only if is trivial, given that for any (since is nilpotent).
Choose a twist so that its order is greater than . This is an extension of the previous case. Once again, a bundle of rank is very stable if and only if is trivial. For example, is -very stable.∎
Remark 3.1.4.
We can briefly talk about decomposable -very stable bundles on an elliptic curve . To respect the stability property, we discard all the twists with positive degrees (Lemma 2.2.2). Assume and decomposes in to indecomposable summands. If is -very stable then
precisely if
holds for all . In particular, if we moreover impose that ’s are stable, each with slope . Then the bundle is -wobbly if and only if for some ,
This assertion is true due to the following well known fact: Let be stable bundles of same slope. Then if and only if . For example, is -wobbly for any stable bundle . On this note we conclude the characterization of the twisted very stable and wobbly bundles on an elliptic curve .∎
We summarize the whole discussion in form of the following theorem.
Theorem 3.1.5.
Let be a complex elliptic curve.
-
(1)
Any bundle is canonically wobbly. A stable bundle , if exists, is canonically very stable. A polystable bundle (summands of equal slopes) is canonically very stable if and only if for all .
-
(2)
Let be a twist of degree . A bundle is -very stable if and only if .
-
(3)
Let be a twist with a degree . A stable bundle is -wobbly.
Corollary 3.1.6.
Let be a complex elliptic curve.
-
(1)
A semistable canonically wobbly bundle is not stable.
-
(2)
Let be a twist of degree . The wobbly locus is a point on .
-
(3)
Let be a twist of degree . Then .
Remark 3.1.7.
Let be an indecomposable bundle of degree . Its grading is a direct sum of line bundles which are isomorphic to each other, thus the grading bundle is wobbly too.
3.2. Topology of the canonically very stable locus and the wobbly locus on curves
We dedicate this subsection to a rapid recollection of the results concerning the canonically wobbly loci on curves of higher genera. We furthermore discuss the merits and demerits of these results in case of an elliptic curve. The geometry of the canonically very stable and the canonically wobbly locus of bundles was formally introduced by Laumon [12] on the algebraic stack of rank bundles , on a complex algebraic curve . Laumon proved that the nilpotent cone in the cotangent bundle is the support of a closed reduced Lagrangian submanifold of of dimension and later concluded that very stable bundles form an open dense subset in . The very stable bundles live inside the open dense subset of slope-semistable bundles for (cf. [12] Proposition (3.5)) by Lemma 2.2.1 and Lemma 2.2.2. In the same article [12] Laumon referred to a result of Drinfeld stating that the collection of the wobbly bundles form a pure closed subset in of codimension . Recently mathematicians ([18], [20], [21]) investigated in to topological properties of the moduli space of the very stable and the wobbly bundles within the moduli space of Higgs bundles on curves of genus . At this stage, we briefly recollect features of the moduli space of semistable -twisted pairs for a chosen line bundle .
For the rest of the article, we restrict our focus to or on a curve of genus at least . Nitsure ([17]) proved existence of a quasi-projective separated noetherian scheme of finite type over parametrizing the collection of strongly equivalent semistable -twisted pairs which contains an open subscheme parametrizing the collection of isomorphism classes of stable pairs. In particular, there is a smooth open subscheme of complex dimension parametrizing the stable pairs which admits a stable underlying bundle. This scheme is integral. In particular, is the cotangent bundle that admits hyperkähler structures. For a general twist the space of stable pairs admits a Kähler structure. There is a proper morphism evaluating the characteristic coefficients of pairs. In [21], Pauly and Peón-Nieto proved a chain of important criteria as a device to locate the very stable bundles inside on a curve of genus . The following result is a version of [21] Theorem 1.1 with minimal changes in the language and the notation.
Theorem 3.2.1.
Let be a stable bundle of rank and degree and be the complex vector space . Then the following statements are equivalent.
-
(1)
is very stable.
-
(2)
is closed in .
-
(3)
The restriction of the Hitchin morphism on is proper.
-
(4)
is quasi-finite.
The proof of the above statement engages deeply with the topology of the limit points coming from the usual -action on the moduli space . We recall, as a standard fact, that this moduli space is semiprojective i.e. the limit which exists in the projective completion of the moduli space lies inside the moduli space itself. To prove this specific assertion, they choose the path of showing a contradiction. They modify a rational map from a complex surface to by resolving its indeterminacy locus and construct a morphism from a connected union of projective lines to the Zariski closure of . This morphism assumes values and at two distinct points and leads to the conclusion that to respect semistability of . A favorable estimate of the dimensions of affine spaces plays an important role in this argument. Recall that a proper morphism between two affine schemes of the same dimension, in particular, the Hitchin base and the vector space of the same complex dimension , is quasi-finite. We can interpret the criterion in a slightly different way. Recall that there is a holomorphic projection morphism and is the vector space which is closed in but may not be closed inside . Theorem 3.2.1 confirms that on a curve of genus , a fiber is closed if and only if is canonically very stable.
The nilpotent cone is the collection of semistable nilpotent Higgs bundles. It is formally defined as the fiber . Due to properness is a compact subset (possibly containing singular points) and it is not easy to explore the generally twisted nilpotent cone. For a stable bundle we have , thus the stable bundles contribute to the nilpotent cone a dimensional estimate at least . Geometrically, a stable point lies at the bottom of the nilpoent cone and appears as a global minima of the Morse function of stable pairs . To study the geometry of the nilpotent cone, Mathematicians ([8], [20]) restricted their investigation to the determinant morphism on trace-free canonically twisted pairs of rank with a fixed determinant . The main advantage here is that the very stable locus lives inside the ‘zero-determinant locus’ of the stable Higgs bundles as an open subset and simplifies the analysis. The definition that is due to [20]. It futher leads to the fact that the wobbly locus is a reducible divisor.
Definition 3.2.2.
Let and be a fixed line bundle on the curve . We denote the moduli space of the stable traceless Higgs bundles of rank with a fixed determinant by . The determinant morphism is proper and surjective and we mention as the nilpotent cone . The nilpotent cone decomposes as . We identify with the collection of pairs and consists of all nonzero nilpotent stable pairs . We observe that is an open subset by the dimensional estimates ([8]) and the image of under the forgetful rational map is the wobbly locus.
Works of Narasimhan and Ramanan [15], [16] laid the foundation of research of stable bundles on complex curves, particularly in the base case of rank . In case of , is isomophic to the intersection of a smooth pencil of quadrics in . As a known fact we mention that any non-trivial extension of the following type (this exact sequence is mentioned in Lemma 2.2.1)
(3.2.1) |
where is a line bundle of degree , is stable and any two such extensions are isomorphic if and only if these are scalar multiples of each other. Moreover, there is a linear embedding . Pal further restricted the wobbly locus inside the cotangent bundle and proved (cf. [18] Theorem 1.3). that the space of wobbly vector bundles of rank with determinant is isomorphic to a surface of degree . Recently Pal has completed his proof for an arbitrary rank of the fact that wobbly locus forms a closed subvariety of codimension inside generalizing his techniques of extensions of the very stable bundles from the rank case to an arbitrary rank (cf. [19] Theorem 1.1). Pal proved that
a stable bundle is wobbly if and only if it passes through a nonfree minimal rational curve.
The work of Pal and Pauly ([20]) is significant for their explicit computation of the Chern classes of the irreducible subdivisors of the wobbly divisor. Assuming the definition 3.2.2, we present a theorem of Pal and Pauly (cf. [20] Theorem 1.1) with minimal changes in the language and the notation. We denote . Unfortunately, we do not find any major information about the topology of the irreducible components of the wobbly locus of an arbitrary rank on a curve of genus .
Theorem 3.2.3.
The wobbly locus is of pure dimension and we have the following decomposition for and ,
In particular, all loci appearing in the above decomposition are divisors. They are all irreducible, except for , which is the union of irreducible divisors.
We explain the divisors briefly. A sublocus is defined
and denote by the Zariski closure of . It is deduced that for and for . There is a filtration of ’s as per [20] Proposition 2.3 that . Further each of the divisors represents an element in the Picard group of . According to a result by Drezet and Narasimhan we are aware that the Picard group of is isomorphic to . The following theorem is Theorem 1.3 [20] which mentions the representatives in the Picard group in terms of the first Chern classes.
Theorem 3.2.4.
We have the following equality for and
The proof is technical. We mention a few important steps. The actual strategy follows from decomposing as a union of images of ’s under the aforementioned forgetful rational map. A set of subvarieties for appear as the pre-images of the Brill-Noether Loci under the holomorphic map . The fundamental class of as a subvariety of is computed as ([20] Lemma 4.1) wherein we use to denote a theta divisor of . Under a classifying map the wobbly subloci is identified as where is the projection map. Here is a subvariety of (cf. page 9 [20]). The fundamental class of is computed as given that is the first Chern class of the pullback of an ample generator of under . Finally, the fundamental class of is the tensor product of with .
3.3. Topology of the wobbly locus on an elliptic curve
The work of Franco Gómez [5] initiates the study of the moduli space of -Higgs bundles on an elliptic curve for a complex reductive group . From this, we collect information on -Higgs bundles. For the group , the results are extensions of Tu’s results ([25]). We combine [5] Proposition 4.2.1 and Proposition 4.2.3 to conclude that a Higgs bundle is semistable if and only if is semistable and stable if and only if is stable (this fact further generalizes for -Higgs bundles). Destabilizing subbundles are obtained out of the Harder-Narasimhan series of a pair on the elliptic curve. As a corollary ([5] Corollary 4.2.4), we have the following statement. Let be polystable of rank and degree and put . Then
in which is a stable bundle of rank , , and . However, even if is a polystable bundle, a Higgs bundle is not necessarily polystable. A polystable bundle on an elliptic curve is grading equivalent to itself but it may not be isomorphic to the underlying bundle of the polystable Higgs bundle that appears as the grading of a pair . This characterization of polystable Higgs bundles sums up to the following result as per [5] Theorem 4.3.7 and Proposition 4.3.9.
Theorem 3.3.1.
There exists a coarse moduli space of strongly equivalence classes of semistable Higgs bundles isomorphic to where . There is a natural projection map
generalizing the bundle projection map .
We know that the Hitchin morphism is proper and we need to update the image of the Hitchin morphism inside the Hitchin base. The process establishes a Higgs bundle analogue of the commutative nature between the Abel-Jacobi morphism and the determinant morphism for bundles. Here the Hitchin base is . Remember that each summand of a polystable Higgs bundle is identified as for some complex numbers (because a stable bundle is simple). We can represent as a long diagonal matrix
factoring . The characteristic coefficients of such a diagonal matrix are symmetric polynomials of the diagonal entries. Assembling these information we conclude that the image of the Hitchin morphism . A canonical embedding of is given as . The following commutative diagram summarizes the discussion;
(3.3.1) |
while the canonical projection morphism . Spectral curves lie at another corner of this theory. Recall that the spectral curves in this specific case are not well behaved because they are always reduced and reducible subschemes of . The fiber of of points of the form so that is isomorphic to an abelian variety . It is an elementary observation that a polystable Higgs bundle is nilpotent if and only if ’s are all . We conclude that the nilpotent cone is isomorphic to and neither a very stable nor a wobbly bundle can be specifically located inside the moduli space simply looking at its fiber under . A fiber admits a vector space structure. Fix and there are well defined operations
and
This is a complex vector space of dimension . Each fiber is closed in the moduli space of semistable pairs. Thus it is not a practical idea to locate very stable bundles with its fiber over (3.3.1). We will further see that the wobbly locus is closed. As a consequence is closed. Here we warn the reader that we shift to the definition of the very stable locus and the wobbly locus given in section 1 for the rest of the article.
We can afford partial comments on the -wobbly loci on an elliptic curve for . Note that the ‘quasi-finiteness’ criterion of -very stability is inconclusive for . Denote , then
(3.3.2) |
As a consequence, we are unable to conclude properness of the restriction of the Hitchin morphism on . On the other hand, for a twist of a low degree, we can partly comment on nilpotent cone over the decomposable locus of rank bundles.
Example 3.3.2.
Let be a twist on an elliptic curve and be a bundle of degree . We assume that . An -twisted (semi)stable nilpotent element is written
Here are global sections of respectively. To respect stability, we need and that is . Thus is obtained by scaling
for a fixed global section of of . It suffices to consider with to count distinct elements under equivalence. In total, the collection of such pairs is represented with orbits of -stable chains
under the usual -action. The noncompact complex analytic space parametrizes these orbits.
Now we handle the case of an even degree. Let and a stable nilpotent -pair . The assumption of stability implies that . We write , for sections of . In a marginal case we have . But to entertain stability and this is contradictory. So, and observe from its nilpotency that vanish at the point . This is possible only if . So we write . Fix a section of so that can be written as
where are complex numbers satisfying . As we further rescale and identify with a representative
This is contradictory as . Thus there are no stable nilpotent pair for . However, if we entertain semistability of nilpotent pairs, only the trivial pairs survive and contribute a smooth compact connected subset isomorphic to .∎
Now we focus on the topology and holomorphic structures of the wobbly loci on an elliptic curve. The wobbly bundles for higher twisted are already sorted out but there is still an open end to explore for trivially twisted wobbly locus. To investigate the topology of such (canonically) wobbly bundles it suffices to feature only the polystable bundles. To construct a very stable bundle by hand we choose a finite sequence of distinct points in the Picard group (after fixing a base point ) which define a unique bundle . We use a combinatorial point of view that yields a connection between the closed subvarieties of the symmetric powers of curves with the wobbly loci.
Let be integers . The numbers are said to be the weights with weight count and total weight if . A grading of a semistable bundle (non uniquely) appears as a weighted direct sum
(3.3.3) |
(each summnand is stable of equal rank and equal degree) and note that and are not necessarily unique. We mention this bundle as alternatively. A generic polystable bundle associate to the weight count and all weights . Let denote the finite set of tuples
(3.3.4) |
Theorem 3.3.3.
Let . Then is a proper closed subset of .
Proof.
Let us identify with the collection of stable bundles of mutually prime rank and degree . Choosing an element , define the map
by
This is a smooth morphism and we denote its image by . This is a compact path connected subset (so closed because is compact) in . We name the subset a wobbly sublocus on . Observe that if and are tuples of weights in with the same weight count differing by action of a permutation then
We observe that and in particular the wobbly locus is obtained as the proper compact connected subset in given as
Finally, it is projective too because is projective. ∎
We sharpen our description of the wobbly locus to compute the global cohomological invariants of the wobbly locus.
Remark 3.3.4.
On an elliptic curve we have the following statements.
-
(1)
Let be weights all . Then there is a filtration of wobbly subloci
-
(2)
Observe that
We call each of these wobbly subloci a standard wobbly sublocus on .
-
(3)
A wobbly sublocus is contained inside one of standard subloci
The wobbly locus of strictly semistable bundles is an irreducible divisor of . In fact, there is a more useful definition of in algebraic geometry assuming the points of the symmetric powers as effective divisors. Let us consider and
There is an orientation preserving diagonal morphism (cf. [13]) by the following weighted direct sum
(3.3.5) |
In a particular case we obtain the sublocus as the image of . Moreover, if then is an isomorphism of complex manifolds
(3.3.6) |
Remark 3.3.5.
The above definition of a diagonal morphism makes sense for curves of an arbitrary genus. In case , MacDonald ([13]) identified the image spaces of (for specific tuples ) in with known projective curves and projective surfaces. However, we are not aware of any better description of the image of the diagonal morphism inside the projective variety for curves of nonzero genera.
Let . Computation of the image of the fundamental class — that is, the image of the generator of
under the diagonal morphism is a standard problem in intersection theory. The standard wobbly subloci are proper closed submanifolds of isomorphic to for respectively. Indeed, observe that and there are maps
given as
(3.3.7) |
so that these subloci are images of . In [13], this variety appears and is denoted with . Each of these varieties is irreducible because is irreducible. Also observe that the usual structure sheaf of complex holomorphic functions leaves it reduced. Thus is smooth and integral and its admits complex dimension dimension . As a proper closed subvariety admits dimension . By induction, a sublocus admits Krull dimension (otherwise has dimension from the above filtration of closed subvarieties). In particular, the aforementioned filtration of standard subloci supports the fact that Krull dimension of the wobbly locus inside is . Finally, every standard wobbly sublocus is a projective variety because is a projective variety and a symmetric product of is a projective variety. We organize the discussion in the following commutative diagram. This concludes a version of Drinfeld’s claim ([12]) on an elliptic curve.
(3.3.8) |
For , we have a natural closed embedding with The image of is the hyperplane of a fixed component inside . Going one step further, is given by . The embedding (as and ) fits in the commutative diagram 3.3.8.
Corollary 3.3.6.
The very stable locus is an open dense subset of . We denote
There is a filtration of open dense subsets in by
The following proposition is immediate.
Proposition 3.3.7.
Let . For each of the numbers , there is a -fold holomorphic covering restricting .
Proof.
We address defined as
(3.3.9) |
These maps are holomorphic surjective defined between compact complex manifolds of the same complex dimension . Let us choose the open dense subset of consisting of the polystable bundles with exactly two repeating components.
(3.3.10) |
To prove that the degree of is , it suffices to focus on only. Choose two different representatives of a polystable bundle (in the image of )
(3.3.11) |
From the definition of we have and for all . So . Indeed and for the repeating component in the left hand side. This is possible precisely if . Thus and are unique up to a permutation leading to the fact that each fiber of contains exactly distinct points. ∎
3.4. Computation of topological invariants of the wobbly locus
An element of the wobbly locus, as an effective divisor, defines a unique holomorphic line bundle on . Recall that the finite holomorphic covering map of sheets by the underlying group action defines a group homomorphism . Also is of the form while denotes the -th projection morphism. We can identify the Picard variety of as the class of representatives so that
(3.4.1) |
holds for all . On a smooth generic curve of genus the Néron-Severi group of is generated with two elements ([1], [11]). Instead we recall the computations of the fundamental classes of the wobbly subloci (in the subring of algebraic parts of the graded rational cohomology ring ) on an elliptic curve from [13].
We first fix our conventions. We denote with ‘’ the cup-product operation of integral cohomology groups or simply juxtapose two elements. On a complex elliptic curve , recall that is generated by two elements over the ring of integers and generates induced by the orientation of . The set of elements generates the graded cohomology ring . The relations satisfied for are the following:
Let . Then and and . Furthermore, and . The graded cohomology ring is generated by over under the conditions that anticommute with each other and commute with and (cf. [13] 6.3). We denote with the element .
As usual we identify with and is a fixed base point. Then there is a holomorphic map given by and is a bundle which has fiber at . For there is a vector bundle of rank so that is the projective bundle associated to . The map defines a projective subbundle . The degree of is given by . Recall that the minimal equation satisfied by is (it is only a special case of the general formula available for a projective bundle). Comparing this equation with the degree of is computed. The morphism further induces with . The Chern class of is computed as .
Recall the diagonal morphism once again
(3.4.2) |
The cohomology class of the image of is the coefficient of in the polynomial
while , and . In particular, we write by the formula
and further we have the cohomology class of the wobbly locus which gives the first chern class of the wobbly divisor. This statement can be viewed as an application of Poincaré duality combining the push-pull projection formula on forms where and (while runs from to ).
Remark 3.4.1.
Let be a line bundle on and . Here we modify with about the base point for which we identify . We recall that the collection of semistable bundles with fixed determinant is identified with inside the symmetric power (fiber of the Abel-Jacobi morphism). We will investigate the wobbly loci of fixed determinant . is a finite set of points. Rest of these varieties are smooth closed subvarieties isomorphic to the total spaces of projective bundles for and admits as a closed subvariety. For a chosen point and chosen in the above integer bound, consider the holomorphic line bundle of degree on . We first give a reader-friendly description of projective fibers. We identify as based at a point . Fix a nonzero section vanishing at . There is an injective morphism of -vector spaces (denoting with a nonzero section of ). This leads to a closed embedding contributing the hyperplane at infinity.
We obtain the standard wobbly loci of a fixed determinant as a projective bundle on the elliptic curve . We define a bundle with fiber at . Existence of the bundle is approved by Grauert’s semicontinuity theorem ([7] Corollary 12.9). Consider the Poincaré line bundle ([4], Theorem 5.1 or [24]) for which . Consider the sheaf
that is locally free of rank same as the complex dimension of . Since , we obtain a bundle on associated to which we call . Finally, the wobbly loci of fixed determinant are obtained as that admits complex dimension . There is an injective morphism of projective bundles: at choose defined by a divisor and map it to the effective divisor . We pass to the action by nonzero complex numbers to write a closed immersion and organize this fact in the following filtration of closed subvarieties (a version of Drinfeld’s claim for very stable bundles of a fixed determinant line bundle)
(3.4.3) |
Here count many distinct line bundles so that . This commutative diagram 3.4.3 appears as the restriction of 3.3.8 on the moduli space of semistable bundles of fixed determinant . However, we are not yet able to conclude that (at least as smooth projective varieties, even if not as -bundles on ) in case, . There are more unsettled questions left. Denote the induced morphism . Then the graded cohomology ring is the polynomial ring generated by the first Chern class of the tautological line bundle with coefficients from under the constraint . The restriction of the diagonal morphism induces a morphism . There is a generator of so that . Unfortunately, at this stage we do not know the exact formula of in terms of (the powers of) .
The symmetric powers of a curve being a generalized construction of the complex projective spaces deserve a few comments on cellular decompositions. The -th projective space is isomorphic to with a cell decomposition of . For higher genus curves, a cell decomposition of a symmetric product is not easily achievable. We provide a pseudo-cell decomposition for a symmetric power of an elliptic curve , which is possible because of its group law. First, observe that is the open subset that avoids the divisors containing the point . Also the subset , for an arbitrary choice of a base point , is a noncompact connected complex manifold unique up to an isomorphism. Let be another point on . There is an automorphism on that maps to : for any consider the divisor that is linearly equivalent to a unique point . From this automorphism we can identify for all . The noncompact curve is an affine curve. We denote and for practical purposes we can choose a base point to define the map . Note that , thus is analogous to a Bruhat cell and is analogous to a Schubert variety. It is customary to mention that (based at ) followed by a flag of closed subvarieties
Let be a line bundle of degree . The projective space is a subvariety of . The set of linearly equivalent effective divisors of that avoid (that is, the holomorphic sections of not vanishing at ) is . Observe that a global section of that vanishes at is a tensor product of a section of with a nonzero section of . Thus we obtain, via the restriction of a pseudo-cell decomposition, the usual cell decomposition on projetive spaces below
The divisor at infinity admits an very nice -dimensional complex manifold structure with an underlying vector space structure. Let be linearly independent global sections of . Then the linearly independent sections of extend to a global basis of attaching a global section . Obviously, does not vanish at . We consider the -tuples of coefficients of the ordered basis with the nonzero contributions from .
We obtain similar straight forward cases of pseudo-cell decomposition on the standard wobbly loci.
(3.4.4) |
We mimic the cell decomposition for the wobbly loci of a fixed determinant by restricting the previous cell decomposition. At a fixed base point we have a canonical closed embedding by . We obtain the open subset
and
(3.4.5) |
Here we are yet to conclude if the holomorphic structure of the open set depends at all on the choice of a base point .
Remark 3.4.2.
As a final exercise, we compute the Poincaré polynomial of a standard wobbly sublocus and of a standard wobbly sublocus with a fixed determinant . We do this by applying a Künneth decomposition on the Poincaré polynomials of , , and projective bundles on a curve. The Betti numbers of symmetric products of a curve are by now classical, and were computed in [13]. We obtain
and
Here, runs from to . We implement the formula .
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