The Dolbeault geometric Langlands conjecture via limit categories

TL;DR

This paper introduces limit categories for cotangent stacks to formulate and support a version of the Dolbeault geometric Langlands conjecture, establishing categorical equivalences and decompositions related to Higgs bundles and BPS invariants.

Contribution

It develops the theory of limit categories for cotangent stacks and applies them to formulate and analyze the Dolbeault geometric Langlands conjecture, including semiorthogonal decompositions and Hecke operators.

Findings

Established functorial properties of limit categories.

Proved semiorthogonal decomposition into quasi-BPS categories.

Constructed Hecke operators compatible with Wilson operators.

Abstract

We introduce limit categories for cotangent stacks of smooth stacks as an effective version of classical limits of categories of D-modules on them. We develop their general theory and pursue their relation with categories of D-modules. In particular, we establish the functorial properties of limit categories such as the smooth pull-back and projective push-forward. Using the notion of limit categories, we propose a precise formulation of the Dolbeault geometric Langlands conjecture, proposed by Donagi-Pantev as the classical limit of the de Rham geometric Langlands equivalence. It states an equivalence between the derived categories of moduli stacks of semistable Higgs bundles and limit categories of moduli stacks of all Higgs bundles. We prove the existence of a semiorthogonal decomposition of the limit category into quasi-BPS categories, which are categorical versions of BPS invariants on a non-compact Calabi-Yau 3-fold. This semiorthogonal decomposition is interpreted as a Langlands dual to the semiorthogonal decomposition constructed in our previous work on the category of coherent sheaves on the moduli stack of semistable Higgs bundles. We also construct Hecke operators on limit categories for Higgs bundles. They are expected to be compatible with Wilson operators under our formulation of Dolbeault geometric Langlands conjecture. The conjectured equivalence implies an equivalence between BPS categories for semistable Higgs bundles, which we expect to be a categorical version of the topological mirror symmetry conjecture for Higgs bundles by Hausel-Thaddeus.