Integrating Over Higgs Branches

We develop some useful techinques for integrating over Higgs branches in supersymmetric theories with 4 and 8 supercharges. In particular, we define a regularized volume for hyperkahler quotients. We evaluate this volume for certain ALE and ALF spaces in terms of the hyperkahler periods. We also reduce these volumes for a large class of hyperkahler quotients to simpler integrals. These quotients include complex coadjoint orbits, instanton moduli spaces on IR and ALE manifolds, Hitchin spaces, and moduli spaces of (parabolic) Higgs bundles on Riemann surfaces. In the case of Hitchin spaces the evaluation of the volume reduces to a summation over solutions of Bethe Ansatz equations for the non-linear Schrödinger system. We discuss some applications of our results. Dec. 27, 1997