English

Fractional instantons in 2d $\mathbb{C}P^{N-1}$ model and 4d Yang-Mills theory with 't Hooft twists

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-07-18 v1

Abstract

We derive the explicit formula for fractional BPS lumps (or fractional instantons) in the CPN1\mathbb{C}P^{N-1} nonlinear sigma model on a two-dimensional torus under various shift-clock twisted boundary conditions. After regularizing the CPN1\mathbb{C}P^{N-1} model by an NN-component Abelian-Higgs model, those twisted boundary conditions introduce nontrivial 't~Hooft fluxes p/Np/N for the U(1)U(1) gauge field, and the topological charge becomes fractionalized as k+p/NZ+p/Nk+p/N\in \mathbb{Z}+p/N. The moduli space is globally determined as the CPNk+p1\mathbb{C}P^{Nk+p-1}-fiber bundle on a 22-torus, which is a K\"ahler manifold of complex dimension Nk+pNk + p as predicted by the index theorem. We present two different parametrizations of the moduli space: one of them immediately identifies the small-lump singularity appearing in the CPN1\mathbb{C}P^{N-1} limit, while the other makes the modular invariance manifest. We also discuss the implications of our finding for the 44d SU(N)SU(N) Yang-Mills theory on the 44-torus with 't~Hooft twists. By tuning the aspect ratio of the 4-torus, fractional instantons in the CPN1\mathbb{C}P^{N-1} model with a non-Fubini-Study metric are obtained through the dimensional reduction of 44d Yang-Mills theory, whose moduli space coincides with the one obtained for the standard CPN1\mathbb{C}P^{N-1} model as complex manifolds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.12802,
  title  = {Fractional instantons in 2d $\mathbb{C}P^{N-1}$ model and 4d Yang-Mills theory with 't Hooft twists},
  author = {Yui Hayashi and Tatsuhiro Misumi and Muneto Nitta and Keisuke Ohashi and Yuya Tanizaki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.12802},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

41+16 pages, 3 figures