We systematically study the moduli stacks of Higgs bundles, spectral curves, and Norm maps on Deligne–Mumford curves. As an application, under some mild conditions, we prove the Strominger–Yau–Zaslow duality for the moduli spaces of Higgs bundles over a hyperbolic stacky curve.

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.

Let C be a smooth projective curve of genus $2$ . Following a method by O’Grady, we construct a semismall desingularisation $\tilde {\mathcal {M}}_{Dol}^G$ of the moduli space $\mathcal {M}_{Dol}^G$ of semistable G-Higgs bundles of degree 0 for $G=\mathrm {GL}(2,\mathbb {C}), \mathrm {SL}(2,\mathbb {C})$ . By the decomposition theorem of Beilinson, Bernstein and Deligne, one can write the cohomology of $\tilde {\mathcal {M}}_{Dol}^G$ as a direct sum of the intersection cohomology of $\mathcal {M}_{Dol}^G$ plus other summands supported on the singular locus. We use this splitting to compute the intersection cohomology of $\mathcal {M}_{Dol}^G$ and prove that the mixed Hodge structure on it is pure, in analogy with what happens to ordinary cohomology in the smooth case of coprime rank and degree.

This work is the geometric part of our proof of the weighted fundamental lemma, which is an extension of Ngô Bao Châu’s proof of the Langlands–Shelstad fundamental lemma. Ngô’s approach is based on a study of the elliptic part of the Hichin fibration. The total space of this fibration is the algebraic stack of Hitchin bundles and its base space is the affine space of ‘characteristic polynomials’. Over the elliptic set, the Hitchin fibration is proper and the number of points of its fibers over a finite field can be expressed in terms of orbital integrals. In this paper, we study the Hitchin fibration over an open set larger than the elliptic set, namely the ‘generically regular semi-simple set’. The fibers are in general neither of finite type nor separated. By analogy with Arthur’s truncation, we introduce the substack of ξ-stable Hitchin bundles. We show that it is a Deligne–Mumford stack, smooth over the base field and proper over the base space of ‘characteristic polynomials’. Moreover, the number of points of the ξ-stable fibers over a finite field can be expressed as a sum of weighted orbital integrals, which appear in the Arthur–Selberg traceformula.

The moduli space of stable vector bundles on a Riemann surface is smooth when the rank and degree are coprime, and is diffeomorphic to the space of unitary connections of central constant curvature. A classic result of Newstead and Atiyah and Bott asserts that its rational cohomology ring is generated by the universal classes, that is, by the Künneth components of the Chern classes of the universal bundle.

This paper studies the larger, non-compact moduli space of Higgs bundles, as introduced by Hitchin and Simpson, with values in the canonical bundle $K$. This is diffeomorphic to the space of all connections of central constant curvature, whether unitary or not. The main result of the paper is that, in the rank 2 case, the rational cohomology ring of this space is again generated by universal classes.

The spaces of Higgs bundles with values in $K(n)$ for $n > 0$ turn out to be essential to the story. Indeed, we show that their direct limit has the homotopy type of the classifying space of the gauge group, and hence has cohomology generated by universal classes.