Higgs bundles over cell complexes and representations of finitely generated groups

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to extend the Donaldson-Corlette theorem to the case of vector bundles over cell complexes. We define the notion of a vector bundle and a Higgs bundle over a complex, and describe the associated Betti, de Rham and Higgs moduli spaces. The main theorem is that the $SL(r, \mathbb{C})$ character variety of a finitely presented group $\Gamma$ is homeomorphic to the moduli space of rank $r$ Higgs bundles over an admissible complex $X$ with $\pi_1(X) = \Gamma$. A key role is played by the theory of harmonic maps defined on singular domains.