On Gieseker stability for Higgs sheaves

Abstract

We review the notion of Gieseker stability for torsion-free Higgs sheaves. This notion is a natural generalization of the classical notion of Gieseker stability for torsion-free coherent sheaves. We prove some basic properties that are similar to the classical ones for torsion-free coherent sheaves over projective algebraic manifolds. In particular, we show that Gieseker stability for torsion-free Higgs sheaves can be defined using only Higgs subsheaves with torsion-free quotients; and we show that a classical relation between Gieseker stability and Mumford-Takemoto stability extends naturally to Higgs sheaves. We also prove that a direct sum of two Higgs sheaves is Gieseker semistable if and only if the Higgs sheaves are both Gieseker semistable with equal normalized Hilbert polynomial and we prove that a classical property of morphisms between Gieseker semistable sheaves also holds in the Higgs case; as a consequence of this and the existing relation between Mumford-Takemoto stability and Gieseker stability, we obtain certain properties concerning the existence of Hermitian-Yang-Mills metrics, simplesness and extensions in the Higgs context. Finally, we make some comments about Jordan-H\"older and Harder-Narasimhan filtrations for Higgs sheaves.