On the Chern filtration for the moduli of bundles on curves

Abstract: We introduce and study the Chern filtration on the cohomology of the moduli of bundles on curves. This can be viewed as a natural cohomological invariant defined via tautological classes that interpolates between additive Betti numbers and the multiplicative ring structure. In the rank two case, we fully compute the Chern filtration for moduli of stable bundles and all intermediate stacks in the Harder--Narasimhan stratification. We observe a curious symmetry of the Chern filtration on the moduli of rank two stable bundles, and construct $\mathfrak{sl}_2$-actions that categorify this symmetry. Our study of the Chern filtration is motivated by the $P=C$ phenomena in several related geometries.