A degeneration of moduli of Hitchin pairs

In this talk, I will discuss the construction and study a degeneration of the
moduli space
of Higgs bundles of rank n and degree d; this degeneration has analytic normal
crossing singularities. 
Central to this theory is the geometry of the Hitchin fibre which reveals asomewhat
new aspect of the theory of compactifications of Picard varieties of
curves, which at the same time yields a degeneration of the classical Hitchin
picture. In contrast to the usual theory of Picard compactifications, the ones
which arise here have analytic normal crossing singularities. A natural toric
picture shows
up, which in a certain sense underlies the so-called abelianization philosophy.

It is based on joint work with P. Barik and D.S. Nagaraj.