Using spinorial geometry techniques, we classify the supersymmetric solutions of euclidean ${\cal N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. These backgrounds represent generalizations of instantons with nontrivial scalar fields turned on, and satisfy some constraints that bear a similarity with the Hitchin equations, and contain the Donaldson equations as a special subcase. It turns out that these constraints can be obtained by dimensional reduction of the octonionic instanton equations, and may be rephrased in terms of a selfduality-like condition for a complex connection. We also show that the supersymmetry conditions imply the equations of motion only partially.
We compute the spinorial cohomology of ten-dimensional abelian SYM at order alpha'^3 and we find that it is trivial. Consequently, linear supersymmetry alone excludes the presence of alpha'^3-order corrections. Our result lends support to the conjecture that there may be a unique supersymmetric deformation of ordinary ten-dimensional abelian SYM.
Solutions to the four-dimensional Euclidean Weyl equation in the background of a general JNR N-instanton are known to be normalisable and regular throughout four-space. We show that these solutions are asymptotically given by a linear combination of simple singular solutions to the free Weyl equation, which can be interpreted as localised spinors. The `spinorial' data parameterising the asymptotics of the delocalised solutions to the Weyl equation in the presence of the instanton almost determines the background instanton, yet not completely. However, it captures the geometry and symmetry of t…
The one-instanton contributions to various correlation functions of supercurrents in four-dimensional N=4 supersymmetric SU(2) Yang-Mills theory are evaluated to the lowest order in perturbation theory.Expressions of the same form are obtained from the leading effects of a single D-instanton extracted from the IIB superstring effective action around the AdS5*S5 background. This is in line with the suggested AdS/Yang-Mills correspondence. The relation between Yang--Mills instantons and D-instantons is further confirmed by the explicit form of the classical D-instanton solution in the AdS5*S5 ba…
Fields in supersymmetric gauge theories may be seen as elements in a spinorial cohomology. We elaborate on this subject, specialising to maximally supersymmetric theories, where the superspace Bianchi identities, after suitable conventional constraints are imposed, put the theories on shell. In these cases, the spinorial cohomologies describe in a unified manner gauge transformations, fields and possible deformations of the models, e.g. string-related corrections in an alpha' expansion. Explicit cohomologies are calculated for super-Yang-Mills theory in D=10, for the N=(2,0) tensor multiplet i…
We construct a four-parameter class of self-dual instanton solutions of the classical SU(2)-Yang-Mills equations in a closed Euclidean Robertson-Walker space-time.
We investigate Yang-Mills instantons on a 7-dimensional manifold of G_2 holonomy. By proposing a spherically symmetric ansatz for the Yang-Mills connection, we have ordinary differential equations as the reduced instanton equation, and give some explicit and numerical solutions.
The analysis in previous publications of the instanton constraints required to produce a finite action of the theory is carried out also for N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.
We explicitly construct SL(2,C) Yang-Mills (weakly) three and four instanton sheaves on CP^3. These results extend the previous construction of Yang-Mills (weakly) instanton sheaves with topological charge two [18].
We calculate the one-instanton contribution to the prepotential in $N=2$ supersymmetric $SU(N_c)$ Yang-Mills theory from the microscopic viewpoint. We find that the holomorphy argument simplifies the group integrations of the instanton configurations. For $N_{c}=3$, the result agrees with the exact solution.
We consider the BPS dyonic instantons in the 5-dim supersymmetric Yang-Mills Chern-Simons theories. Its field theoretic structures and the moduli space dynamics in term of the ADHM data have been explored in detail. We find that the field theoretic Chern-Simons term leads to an effective magnetic field on instanton moduli space.
We study the construction of Hermitian Yang-Mills instantons over resolutions of Calabi-Yau cones of arbitrary dimension. In particular, in d complex dimensions, we present an infinite family, parametrised by an integer k and a continuous modulus, of SU(d) instantons. A detailed study of their properties, including the computation of the instanton numbers is provided. We also explain how they can be used in the construction of heterotic non-Kahler compactifications.
Instanton calculations are demonstrated from a viewpoint of twisted topological field theory. Various properties become manifest such that perturbative corrections are terminated at one-loop, and norm cancellations occur between bosonic and fermionic excitations in any instanton background. We can easily observe that for a suitable choice of Green functions the infinite dimensional path integration reduces to a finite dimensional integration over a supersymmetric instanton moduli space.
We present arguments for the existence of self-dual Yang-Mills instantons for several spherically symmetric backgrounds with Euclidean signature. The time-independent Yang-Mills field has finite action and a vanishing energy momentum tensor and does not disturb the geometry. We conjecture the existence of similar solutions for any nonextremal SO(3)-spherically symmetric background.
Following the observation of Banks and Green that the D-instantons in AdS_5 correspond to the instantons in 4-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, we study in more detail this correspondence for individual instantons. The supergravity solution for a D-instanton in AdS_5 is found using the ansatz used previously for D-instantons in flat space. We check that the actions and supersymmetries match between the D-instanton solution and the Yang-Mills instanton. Generalizing this result, we propose that any supergravity solution satisfying the ansatz corresponds to a (anti-)self-dual Yang-Mi…
We consider the Yang-Mills flow equations on a reductive coset space G/H and the Yang-Mills equations on the manifold R x G/H. On nonsymmetric coset spaces G/H one can introduce geometric fluxes identified with the torsion of the spin connection. The condition of G-equivariance imposed on the gauge fields reduces the Yang-Mills equations to phi^4-kink equations on R. Depending on the boundary conditions and torsion, we obtain solutions to the Yang-Mills equations describing instantons, chains of instanton-anti-instanton pairs or modifications of gauge bundles. For Lorentzian signature on R x G…
We consider a gauge theory in which a nonassociative Moufang loop takes the place of a structure group. We construct Belavin-Polyakov-Schwartz-Tyupkin (BPST) and t'Hooft like instanton solutions of the gauge theory in seven and eight dimensions.
Prepotentials in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories are known to obey non-linear partial differential equations called Witten-Dijkgraaf-Verlinde-Verlinde (WDVV) equations. In this paper, the prepotentials at one-instanton level in N=2 supersymmetric SU(4) Yang-Mills theory are studied from the standpoint of WDVV equations. Especially, it is shown that the one-instanton prepotentials are obtained from WDVV equations by assuming the perturbative prepotential and by using the scaling relation as a subsidiary condition but are determined without introducing Seiberg-Witten curve. In this way, v…
A large class of equivalence relations between the moduli spaces of instantons on ALE spaces and the Higgs branches of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, are found by means of a certain kind of duality transformation between brane configurations in superstring theories. 4d, N=2 and 5d, N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories with product gauge groups turn out to correspond to the ALE-instanton moduli of type II B and type II A superstring theories, respectively.
We consider in more detail the role of D0-branes as instantons in the construction of SU(N) Super Yang-Mills and Super QCD theories in four space-time dimensions with D4, D6 and NS-branes. In particular, we show how the D0-branes describe both the exact and constrained instantons and reproduce the correct pattern of lifting of zero modes on the various branches of these models.
An analysis is performed of instanton configurations in pure Euclidean Yang-Mills theory containing small Lorentz-violating perturbations that maintain gauge invariance. Conventional topological arguments are used to show that the general classification of instanton solutions involving the topological charge is the same as in the standard case. Explicit solutions are constructed for general gauge invariant corrections to the action that are quadratic in the curvature. The value of the action is found to be unperturbed to lowest order in the Lorentz-violating parameters.
We discuss the role of D0-branes as instantons in the construction of SU(N) Super Yang-Mills and Super QCD theories in four space-time dimensions with D4-, D6- and NS-branes. [To appear in the proceedings of the conference "Quantum Aspects of Gauge Theories, Supersymmetry and Unification", held at Neuchatel University, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 18--23 September 1997.]
Instantons and their quantisation in pure Yang-Mills theory formulated in the background of de Sitter spacetime represented by spatially-closed ($k = 1$) Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric are discussed. As for the classical treatment of the instanton physics, first, explicit instanton solutions are found and next, quantities like Pontryagin index and the semiclassical approximation to the inter-vacua tunnelling amplitude are evaluated. The Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem is checked as well by constructing explicitly the normalizable fermion zero modes in this de Sitter spacetime instanton b…
In the presence of a background supergravity flux, N M2-branes will expand via the Myers effect into M5-branes wrapped on a fuzzy three-sphere. In previous work the fluctuations of the M2-branes were shown to be described by the five-dimensional Yang-Mills gauge theory associated to D4-branes. We show that the ABJM prescription for eleven-dimensional momentum in terms of magnetic flux lifts to an instanton flux of the effective five-dimensional Yang-Mills theory on the sphere, giving an M-theory interpretation for these instantons.
We present a semiclassical calculation of instanton effects in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory formulated on R^{3}XS^{1} and also in the N=1 theory obtained by introducing chiral multiplet masses. In the N=4 case, these instanton effects are related to the bulk contribution to the index which counts BPS dyons in the corresponding four dimensional theory. In both cases, the calculations provide semiclassical tests of recently proposed exact results for the lowest non-trivial terms in the derivative expansion of the Wilsonian effective action.
We show that the physical N=4 super Yang-Mills theory on a four-sphere with an arbitrary gauge group receives no instanton contributions, by clarifying the relation between the hypermultiplet mass and the equivariant parameters of the mass-deformed theory preserving N=2 supersymmetry. The correct relation also implies that N=4 superconformal Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU(2) corresponds to Liouville theory on a torus with the insertion of a non-trivial operator, rather than the identity as have been claimed in the literature.
We study the relationship between instanton counting in N=4 Yang-Mills theory on a generic four-dimensional toric orbifold and the semi-classical expansion of q-deformed Yang-Mills theory on the blowups of the minimal resolution of the orbifold singularity, with an eye to clarifying the recent proposal of using two-dimensional gauge theories to count microstates of black holes in four dimensions. We describe explicitly the instanton contributions to the counting of D-brane bound states which are captured by the two-dimensional gauge theory. We derive an intimate relationship between the two-di…
In this paper we revisit the arguments that have led to the proposal of a multi-instanton measure for supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. We then recall how the moduli space of gauge connections on $\real^4$ can be built from a hyperkähler quotient construction which we generalize to supermanifolds. The measure we are looking for is given by the supermetric of the supermoduli space thus introduced. To elucidate the construction we carry out explicit computations in the case of N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories.
This is a self-contained set of lecture notes on instantons in (super) Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions and in quantum mechanics. First the basics are derived from scratch: the regular and singular one-instanton solutions for Yang-Mills theories with gauge groups SU(2) and SU(N), their bosonic and fermionic zero modes, the path integral instanton measure, and supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in Euclidean space. Then we discuss applications: the θ-angle of QCD, the solution of the U(1) problem, the way Higgs fields solve the large-instanton problem, and tunneling and phase transitions in …
We describe the explicit construction of Yang-Mills instantons on ALE spaces, following the work of Kronheimer and Nakajima. For multicenter ALE metrics, we determine the abelian instanton connections which are needed for the construction in the non-abelian case. We compute the partition function of Maxwell theories on ALE manifolds and comment on the issue of electromagnetic duality. We discuss the topological characterization of the instanton bundles as well as the identification of their moduli spaces. We generalize the 't Hooft ansatz to SU(2) instantons on ALE spaces and on other hyper-Ka…
The total space of the spinor bundle on the four dimensional sphere S^4 is a quaternionic line bundle that admits a metric of Spin(7) holonomy. We consider octonionic Yang-Mills instanton on this eight dimensional gravitational instanton. This is a higher dimensional generalization of (anti-)self-dual instanton on the Eguchi-Hanson space. We propose an ansatz for Spin(7) Yang-Mills field and derive a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations. The solutions are classified according to the asymptotic behavior at infinity. We give a complete solution, when the gauge group is reduced to…
The results obtained by Seiberg and Witten for the low-energy Wilsonian effective actions of N=2 supersymmetric theories with gauge group SU(2) are in agreement with instanton computations carried out for winding numbers one and two. This suggests that the instanton saddle point saturates the non-perturbative contribution to the functional integral. A natural framework in which corrections to this approximation are absent is given by the topological field theory built out of the N=2 Super Yang-Mills theory. After extending the standard construction of the Topological Yang-Mills theory to encom…
We construct an octonionic instanton solution to the seven dimensional Yang-Mills theory based on the exceptional gauge group $G_2$ which is the automorphism group of the division algebra of octonions. This octonionic instanton has an extension to a solitonic two-brane solution of the low energy effective theory of the heterotic string that preserves two of the sixteen supersymmetries and hence corresponds to $N=1$ space-time supersymmetry in the (2+1) dimensions transverse to the seven dimensions where the Yang-Mills instanton is defined.
We study the instanton effective action of four-dimensional deformed N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in the presence of constant, self-dual Ramond-Ramond (R-R) 3-form background in type IIB superstring theory. We compare the instanton effective action with the low-energy effective action on D(-1)-branes in the D3-D(-1) system in the same background. We find that discrepancy appears at the second order of the R-R background, which was also observed in deformed N=2 theory. This discrepancy is resolved if the action of the deformed gauge theory is improved by introducing a term with coordina…
In this letter we report on the computation of instanton-dominated correlation functions in supersymmetric YM theories on ALE spaces. Following the approach of Kronheimer and Nakajima, we explicitly construct the self-dual connection on ALE spaces necessary to perform such computations. We restrict our attention to the simplest case of an $SU(2)$ connection with lowest Chern class on the Eguchi-Hanson gravitational background.
We extend the recent conjecture on the relation between a certain 1/8 BPS subsector of 4d N=4 SYM on S^2 and 2d Yang-Mills theory by turning on circular 1/2 BPS 't Hooft operators linked with S^2. We show that localization predicts that these 't Hooft operators and their correlation functions with Wilson operators on S^2 are captured by instanton contributions to the partition function of the 2d Yang-Mills theory. Based on this prediction, we compute explicitly correlation functions involving the 't Hooft operator, and observe precise agreement with S-duality predictions.
We study (anti-) instantons in super Yang-Mills theories defined on a non anticommutative superspace. The instanton solution that we consider is the same as in ordinary SU(2) N=1 super Yang-Mills, but the anti-instanton receives corrections to the U(1) part of the connection which depend quadratically on fermionic coordinates, and linearly on the deformation parameter C. By substituting the exact solution into the classical Lagrangian the topological charge density receives a new contribution which is quadratic in C and quartic in the fermionic zero-modes. The topological charge turns out to b…
We study the low-energy effective theory in N=2 super Yang-Mills theories by microscopic and exact approaches. We calculate the one-instanton correction to the prepotential for any simple Lie group from the microscopic approach. We also study the Picard-Fuchs equations and their solutions in the semi- classical regime for classical gauge groups with rank r \leq 3. We find that for gauge groups G=A_r, B_r, C_r (r \leq 3) the microscopic results agree with those from the exact solutions.
We study N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory with gauge group SU(2) compactified to three dimensions on a circle of circumference beta. The eight fermion terms in the effective action on the Coulomb branch are determined exactly, for all beta, assuming the existence of an interacting Spin(8) invariant fixed point at the origin. The resulting formulae are manifestly invariant under the SL(2,Z) duality of four dimensional N=4 SYM and lead to interesting quantitative predictions for instanton effects in gauge theory and in Type II string theory.
We study an extension of the ADHM construction to give deformed anti-self-dual (ASD) instantons in N=1/2 super Yang-Mills theory with U(n) gauge group. First we extend the exterior algebra on superspace to non(anti)commutative superspace and show that the N=1/2 super Yang-Mills theory can be reformulated in a geometrical way. By using this exterior algebra, we formulate a non(anti)commutative version of the super ADHM construction and show that the curvature two-form superfields obtained by our construction do satisfy the deformed ASD equations and thus we establish the deformed super ADHM con…
The instanton contributions to the partition function and to homologically trivial Wilson loops for a U(N) Yang-Mills theory on a torus $T^2$ are analyzed. An exact expression for the partition function is obtained as a sum of contributions localized around the classical solutions of Yang-Mills equations, that appear according to the general classification of Atiyah and Bott. Explicit expressions for the exact Wilson loop averages are obtained when N=2, N=3. For general $N$ the contribution of the zero-instanton sector has been carefully derived in the decompactification limit, reproducing the…
Linear recursion relations for the instanton corrections to the effective prepotential of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories with an arbitrary number of hypermultiplets in the fundamental representation of an arbitrary classical gauge group are dervied. The construction proceeds from the Seiberg-Witten solutions and the renormalization group type equations for the prepotential. Successive iterations of these recursion relations allow us to simple obtain instanton corrections to arbitrarily high order, which we exhibit explicitly up to 6-th order. For gauge groups SU(2) and SU(3), our results ag…
We explore maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with walls of impurities respecting half of the supersymmetries. The walls carry fundamental or bifundamental matter multiplets. We employ three-dimensional N=2 superspace language to identify the Higgs branch of this theory. We find that the vacuum conditions determining the Higgs branch are exactly the bow equations yielding Yang-Mills instantons on a multi-Taub-NUT space. Under electric-magnetic duality, the super Yang-Mills theory describing the bulk is mapped to itself, while the fundamental- and bifundamental-carrying impurity walls a…
We investigate finite energy solutions of Yang-Mills--Chern-Simons systems in odd spacetime dimensions, d=2n+1, with n>2. This can be carried out systematically for all n, but the cases n=3,4 corresponding to a 7,8 dimensional spacetime are treated concretely. These are static and spherically symmetric configurations, defined in a flat Minkowski background. The value of the electric charge is fixed by the Chern-Simons coupling constant.
We study the instanton effective action in deformed four-dimensional N=2 and N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theories. These deformed gauge theories are defined on the D-brane world-volume in the presence of constant, self-dual Ramond-Ramond (R-R) 3-form field strength background $\mathcal{F}$ which is scaled as $(2 πα')^{1/2} \mathcal{F} = fixed$ in the zero-slope limit $α' \to 0$. The instanton effective action is obtained by solving equations of motion of the deformed N=2 SYM action. We show that this effective action correctly reproduces the string theory result derived from D3/D(-1)-branes sys…
We consider Euclidean SU(N) Yang-Mills theory on the space GxR, where G is a compact semisimple Lie group, and introduce first-order BPS-type equations which imply the full Yang-Mills equations. For gauge fields invariant under the adjoint G-action these BPS equations reduce to first-order matrix equations, to which we give instanton solutions. In the case of G=SU(2)=S^3, our matrix equations are recast as Nahm equations, and a further algebraic reduction to the Toda chain equations is presented and solved for the SU(3) example. Finally, we change the metric on GxR to Minkowski and construct f…
When eight-dimensional instantons, satisfying F \wedge F = \pm \star_8 (F\wedge F), shrink to zero size, we find stringy objects in higher order ten-dimensional Yang-Mills (viewed as a low-energy limit of open string theory). The associated F^4 action is a combination of two independent parts having a single-trace and a double-trace structure. As a result we get a D-string from the single-trace term and a fundamental string from the double-trace. The latter has (8,0) supersymmetry on the worldsheet and couplings to the background gauge fields of a heterotic string. A correlation between the co…
The nonabelian Berry phase is computed in the T dualized quantum mechanics obtained from the USp(2k) matrix model. Integrating the fermions, we find that each of the spacetime points X_ν^{(i)} is equipped with a pair of su(2) Lie algebra valued pointlike singularities located at a distance m_{(f)} from the orientifold surface. On a four dimensional paraboloid embedded in the five dimensional Euclidean space, these singularities are recognized as the BPST instantons.
We examine a certain 16-fermion correlator in {\cal N}=4 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory in 4 dimensions. Generalizing recent SU(2) results of Bianchi, Green, Kovacs and Rossi, we calculate the exact N-dependence of the effective 16-fermion vertex at the 1-instanton level, and find precise agreement in the large-N limit with the prediction of the type IIB superstring on AdS_5 x S^5. This suggests that the string theory prediction for the 1-instanton amplitude considered here is not corrected by higher-order terms in the alpha' expansion.
We study the ADHM construction of instantons in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory deformed in constant Ramond-Ramond (R-R) 3-form field strength background in type IIB superstrings. We compare the deformed instanton effective action with the effective action of fractional D3/D(-1) branes at the orbifold singularity of C^2/Z_2 in the same R-R background. We find discrepancy between them at the second order in deformation parameters, which comes from the coupling of the translational zero modes of the D(-1)-branes to the R-R background. We improve the deformed action by adding a term with spa…
In the search of YM instanton sheaves with topological charge two, the rank of beta matrix in the monad construction can be dropped from the bundle case with rank(beta)= 2 to either rank(beta) = 1 [4] or 0 on some points of CP^3 of the sheaf cases. In this paper, we first show that the sheaf case with rank(beta)= 0 does not exist for the previous construction of SU(2) complex YM instantons [3]. We then show that in the new "extended complex YM instantons" discovered in this paper, rank(beta) can be either 2 on the whole CP^3 (bundle) with some given ADHM data or 1, 0 on some points of CP^3 wit…
Abelian and center gauges are considered in continuum Yang-Mills theory in order to detect the magnetic monopole and center vortex content of gauge field configurations. Specifically we examine the Laplacian Abelian and center gauges, which are free of Gribov copies, as well as the center gauge analog of the (Abelian) Polyakov gauge. In particular, we study meron, instanton and instanton-anti-instanton field configurations in these gauges and determine their monopole and vortex content. While a single instanton does not give rise to a center vortex, we find center vortices for merons. Furtherm…
I explain how to construct noncommutative BPS configurations in four and lower dimensions by solving linear matrix equations. Examples are instantons in D=4 Yang-Mills, monopoles in D=3 Yang-Mills-Higgs, and (moving) solitons in D=2+1 Yang-Mills-Higgs. Some emphasis is on the latter as a showcase for the dressing method.
We show that every gravitational instantons are SU(2) Yang-Mills instantons on a Ricci-flat four manifold although the reverse is not necessarily true. It is shown that gravitational instantons satisfy exactly the same self-duality equation of SU(2) Yang-Mills instantons on the Ricci-flat manifold determined by the gravitational instantons themselves. We explicitly check the correspondence with several examples and discuss their topological properties.
Soliton contributions to perturbative processes in QFT are controlled by a form factor, which depends on the soliton size. We provide a demonstration of this fact in a class of scalar theories with generic moduli spaces. We then argue that for instanton-solitons in 5D super-Yang-Mills theory the analogous form factor does not lead to faster-than-any-power suppression in the perturbative coupling. We also discuss the implications of such contributions for the UV behavior of maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills in 5D and its relation to the (2,0) CFT in 6D. This is a contribution to the proceedin…
We examine the two-dimensional U(N) Yang-Mills theory by using the technique of random partitions. We show that the large N limit of the partition function of the 2D Yang-Mills theory on S^2 reproduces the instanton counting of 4D N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories introduced by Nekrasov. We also discuss that we can take the ``double scaling limit'' by fixing the product of the N and cell size in Young diagrams, and the effective action given by Douglas and Kazakov is naturally obtained by taking this limit. We give an interpretation for our result from the view point of the superstring theory …
We show that B-type $Π$-stable D-branes do not in general reduce to the (Gieseker-) stable holomorphic vector bundles used in mathematics to construct moduli spaces. We show that solutions of the almost Hermitian Yang--Mills equations for the non-linear deformations of Yang--Mills instantons that appear in the low-energy geometric limit of strings exist iff they are $π$-stable, a geometric large volume version of $Π$-stability. This shows that $π$-stability is the correct physical stability concept. We speculate that this string-canonical choice of stable objects, which is encoded in and deriv…
The Ashtekar-Mason-Newman equations are used to construct the hyperkähler metrics on four dimensional manifolds. These equations are closely related to anti self-dual Yang-Mills equations of the infinite dimensional gauge Lie algebras of all volume preserving vector fields. Several examples of hyperkähler metrics are presented through the reductions of anti self-dual connections. For any gauge group anti self-dual connections on hyperkähler manifolds are constructed using the solutions of both Nahm and Laplace equations.
