Magical nilpotents and higher Teichmuller spaces

In this talk, we will present a special class of nilpotent elements of a complex semisimple Lie algebra. For such a nilpotent element, we will describe how Higgs bundles can be used to construct components of the character variety of a closed surface of genus at least 2. Moreover, such components are deformation spaces of Teichmuller space. The classification of this class of nilpotent elements turns out to be equivalent to Guichard, and Wienhard's notion of Theta-positivity, and so, this construction should describe all Higher Teichmuller spaces. 

Please report video problems to itsupport@slmath.org.

See more of our Streaming videos on our main VMath Videos page.