Nonabelian Yang-Mills-Higgs and Plateau's problem in codimension three

We investigate the asymptotic behavior of the $\mathrm{SU}(2)$-Yang-Mills-Higgs energy $E(Φ,A)=\int_M|d_AΦ|^2+|F_A|^2$ in the large mass limit, proving convergence to the codimension-three area functional in the sense of De Giorgi's $Γ$-convergence. More precisely, for a compact manifold with boundary $M$ and any family of pairs $Φ_m\inΩ^0(M;\mathfrak{su}(2))$ and $A_m\in Ω^1(M;\mathfrak{su}(2))$ indexed by a mass parameter $m\to\infty$, satisfying $$E(Φ_m,A_m)\leq Cm\quad\text{and}\quad\lim_{m\to\infty}\frac{1}{m}\int_M(m-|Φ_m|)^2=0,$$ we prove that the $(n-3)$-currents dual to $\frac{1}{2πm}\mathrm{tr}(d_{A_m}Φ_m\wedge F_{A_m})$ converge subsequentially to a relative integral $(n-3)$-cycle $T$ of mass \begin{equation} \mathbb{M}(T)\leq \liminf_{m\to\infty}\frac{1}{4πm}E(Φ_m,A_m), \end{equation} and show conversely that any integral $(n-3)$-current $T$ with $[T]=0\in H_{n-3}(M,\partial M;\mathbb{Z})$ admits such an approximation, with equality in the above inequality. In the special case of pairs $(Φ_m,A_m)$ satisfying the generalized monopole equation $*d_{A_m}Φ_m=F_{A_m}\wedge Θ$ for a calibration form $Θ\in Ω^{n-3}(M)$, we deduce that the limit $ν=\lim_{m\to\infty}\frac{1}{2πm}|d_{A_m}Φ_m|^2$ of the Dirichlet energy measures satisfies $ν\leq |T|$, with equality if and only if $T$ is calibrated by $Θ$, giving evidence for predictions of Donaldson-Segal in the settings of $G_2$-manifolds and Calabi-Yau $3$-folds.