Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications SIGMA 15 (2019), 039, 32 pages Higgs Bundles and Geometric Structures on Manifolds Daniele ALESSANDRINI Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 205, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany E-mail:
[email protected] URL: https://www.mathi.uni-heidelberg.de/~alessandrini/ Received September 28, 2018, in final form April 17, 2019; Published online May 10, 2019 https://doi.org/10.3842/SIGMA.2019.039 Abstract. Geometric structures on manifolds became popular when Thurston used them in his work on the geometrization conjecture. They were studied by many people and they play an important role in higher Teichm¨ullertheory. Geometric structures on a manifold are closely related with representations of the fundamental group and with flat bundles. Higgs bundles can be very useful in describing flat bundles explicitly, via solutions of Hitchin's equations. Baraglia has shown in his Ph.D. Thesis that Higgs bundles can also be used to construct geometric structures in some interesting cases. In this paper, we will explain the main ideas behind this theory and we will survey some recent results in this direction, which are joint work with Qiongling Li. Key words: geometric structures; Higgs bundles; higher Teichm¨uller theory; Anosov repre- sentations 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 57M50; 53C07; 22E40 1 Introduction The theory of geometric structures on manifolds was introduced by Cartan and Ehresmann in the 1920s, following the ideas given by Klein in his Erlangen program. This theory became popular in the 1980s, when Thurston used it in the statement of his Geometrization Conjecture. Since then, many people contributed important results, see for example [7,8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20, 21].