Higgs bundles, the Toledo invariant and the Cayley correspondence

Abstract

We define the Toledo invariant of a G-Higgs bundle on a Riemann surface, where G is a real semisimple group of Hermitian type, and we prove a Milnor-Wood type bound for this invariant when the bundle is semistable. We prove rigidity results when the Toledo invariant is maximal, establishing in particular a Cayley correspondence when the symmetric space defined by G is of tube type. This gives a new proof of the Milnor-Wood inequality of Burger-Iozzi-Wienhard for representations of the fundamental group of a Riemann surface into G. Compared to previous results using Higgs bundles, it uses general theory and avoids any case by case study.