Variations of Hodge structures for hypergeometric differential operators and parabolic Higgs bundles

Abstract: Consider the holomorphic bundle with connection on $\mathbb P^1-{0,1,\infty}$ corresponding to the regular hypergeometric differential operator [ \prod_{j=1}^h(D-\alpha_j)-z\prod_{j=1}^h(D-\beta_j), \qquad D=z\frac{d}{dz}. ] If the numbers $\alpha_i$ and $\beta_j$ are real and for all $i$ and $j$ the number $\alpha_i-\beta_j$ is not integer, then the bundle with connection is known to underlie a complex polarizable variation of Hodge structures. We calculate some Hodge invariants for this variation, in particular, the Hodge numbers. From this we derive a conjecture of Corti and Golyshev. We also use non-abelian Hodge theory to interpret our theorem as a statement about parabolic Higgs bundles.