The Associated Map of the Nonabelian Gauss-Manin Connection

Abstract: The Gauss-Manin connection for nonabelian cohomology spaces is the isomonodromy flow. We write down explicitly the vector fields of the isomonodromy flow and calculate its induced vector fields on the associated graded space of the nonabelian Hogde filtration. The result turns out to be intimately related to the quadratic part of the Hitchin map.