Classical deformations of noncompact surfaces and their moduli of instantons

We describe semiuniversal deformation spaces for the noncompact surfaces $Z_k := \operatorname{Tot} (\mathcal O_{\mathbb P^1} (-k))$ and prove that any nontrivial deformation $Z_k (\tau)$ of $Z_k$ is affine. It is known that the moduli spaces of instantons of charge $j$ on $Z_k$ are quasi-projective varieties of dimension $2j-k-2$. In contrast, our results imply that the moduli spaces of instantons on any nontrivial deformation $Z_k (\tau)$ are empty.