Spinor-valued Higgs fields

Abstract

We investigate the geometry of holomorphic vector bundles $E$ over a Riemann surface $C$ together with a section of the endomorphism bundle tensored with $K^{1/2}$ -- a square root of the canonical bundle $K$. These parallel to some extent the various features of usual Higgs bundles, such as spectral curve constructions, but some features are radically different. We make essential use of the mod 2 index to distinguish two families of moduli spaces, and provide examples in low genus.