Yang Mills theory and jumping curves

We study a smooth analogue of jumping curves of a holomorphic vector bundle, and use Yang-Mills theory over $S ^{2}$ to show that any non-trivial, smooth Hermitian vector bundle $E$ over a smooth simply connected manifold, must have such curves. This is used to give new examples complex manifolds for which a non-trivial holomorphic vector bundle must have jumping curves in the classical sense, (when $c_1 (E)$ is zero). We also use this to give a new proof a theorem of Gromov on the norm of curvature of unitary connections, and make the theorem slightly sharper. Lastly we define a sequence of new non-trivial integer invariants of smooth manifolds, connected to this theory of smooth jumping curves, and make some computations of these invariants. Our methods include an application of the recently developed Morse-Bott chain complex for the Yang-Mills functional over $S ^{2}$.