A positive formula for volumes of moduli spaces of flat unitary connections on compact surfaces

Abstract

We provide a manifestly positive expression for the volume of the moduli spaces of flat $\mathrm{U}(n)$-valued connections on punctured compact oriented surfaces. This volume is obtained by summing volumes of explicit polytopes describing coloured honeycombs on a polygon, in the spirit of the work of Knutson and Tao describing the spectrum of the sum of two hermitian matrices. As a corollary, we also provide a positive formula for marginals of the $\mathrm{U}(n)$-valued Yang-Mills measure on a compact oriented surface in terms of the probability distribution of an explicit path process.