Higgs bundles and exceptional isogenies

Abstract

We explore relations between Higgs bundles that result from isogenies between low-dimensional Lie groups, with special attention to the spectral data for the Higgs bundles. We focus on isogenies onto $SO(4,C)$ and $SO(6,C)$ and their split real forms. Using fiber products of spectral curves, we obtain directly the desingularizations of the (necessarily singular) spectral curves associated to orthogonal Higgs bundles. In the case of $SO(6,C)$ our construction can be interpreted as a new description of Recillas' trigonal construction.