Higgs bundles on Riemann surfaces, II

On a Riemann Surface $\Sigma$, the moduli space of polystable $\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{C}$)-Higgs bundles can be identified with the space of reductive representations $\pi _1 (\Sigma) \to \mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{C})$. In this talk, we discuss a proof of this so called non-abelian Hodge correspondence. Our goal is to understand how
to construct a Higgs bundle from a given representation and how this construction relates to the theory of harmonic maps.