Stable parabolic Higgs bundles as asymptotically stable decorated swamps

Parabolic Higgs bundles can be described in terms of decorated swamps, which we studied in a recent paper. This description induces a notion of stability of parabolic Higgs bundles depending on a parameter, and we construct their moduli space inside the moduli space of decorated swamps. We then introduce asymptotic stability of decorated swamps in order to study the behaviour of the stability condition as one parameter approaches infinity. The main result is the existence of a constant, such that stability with respect to parameters greater than this constant is equivalent to asymptotic stability. This implies boundedness of all decorated swamps which are semistable with respect to some parameter. Finally, we recover the usual stability condition of parabolic Higgs bundles as asymptotic stability. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.