Model Higgs bundles in exceptional components of the $\text{Sp(4}\text{,}\mathbb{R}\text{)}$-character variety

Abstract

We establish a gluing construction for Higgs bundles over a connected sum of Riemann surfaces in terms of solutions to the $\text{Sp(4}\text{,}\mathbb{R}\text{)}$-Hitchin equations using the linearization of a relevant elliptic operator. The construction can be used to provide model Higgs bundles in all the $2g-3$ exceptional components of the maximal $\text{Sp(4}\text{,}\mathbb{R}\text{)}$-Higgs bundle moduli space, which correspond to components solely consisted of Zariski dense representations. This also allows a comparison between the invariants for maximal Higgs bundles and the topological invariants for Anosov representations constructed by O. Guichard and A. Wienhard.