Chen--Ruan cohomology and orbifold Euler characteristic of moduli spaces of parabolic bundles

Abstract: We consider the moduli space of stable parabolic Higgs bundles of rank $r$ and fixed determinant, and having full flag quasi-parabolic structures over an arbitrary parabolic divisor on a smooth complex projective curve $X$ of genus $g$, with $g\,\geq\, 2$. The group $\Gamma$ of $r$-torsion points of the Jacobian of $X$ acts on this moduli space. We describe the connected components of the various fixed point loci of this moduli under non-trivial elements from $\Gamma$. When the Higgs field is zero, or in other words when we restrict ourselves to the moduli of stable parabolic bundles, we also compute the orbifold Euler characteristic of the corresponding global quotient orbifold. We also describe the Chen--Ruan cohomology groups of this orbifold under certain conditions on the rank and degree, and describe the Chen--Ruan product structure in special cases.