Springer correspondence and mirror symmetries for parabolic Hitchin systems

Abstract: We prove the Strominger--Yau--Zaslow and topological mirror symmetries for parabolic Hitchin systems of types B and C. In contrast to type A, a geometric reinterpretation of Springer duality is necessary. Furthermore, unlike Hitchin's construction in the non-parabolic case, the map between generic fibers in type B and C needs more analysis due to the change of partitions of Springer dual nilpotent orbits, which is the main difficulty in this article. To tackle this challenge, we first construct and study the geometry of the generic Hitchin fibers of moduli spaces of Higgs bundles associated to the nilpotent orbit closures. Then we study their relation with the generic Hitchin fibers of parabolic Hitchin systems. Along this way, we establish intriguing connections between Springer duality, Kazhdan--Lusztig maps, and singularities of spectral curves, and uncover a new geometric interpretation of Lusztig's canonical quotient.