“…We proved that if the spectral curve 1 of V is reduced, then the Higgs field φ is vertical, while if the bundle V is fiberwise regular with reduced (resp., integral) spectral curve, and if its rank and second Chern number satisfy an inequality involving the genus of B and the degree of the fundamental line bundle of π (resp., if the fundamental line bundle is sufficiently ample), then φ is scalar. These results were applied to the problem of characterizing slope-semistable Higgs bundles with vanishing discriminant on the class of elliptic surfaces considered, in terms of the semistability of their pull-backs via maps from arbitrary (smooth, irreducible, complete) curves to X; i.e., we partly established, for the class of elliptic surfaces considered, the conjecture about Higgs bundles satisfying the last mentioned condition that was stated in [3] and was studied in [4,3,5,6,2].…”