Related papers: Modified instanton sum in QCD and higher-groups

It is argued that whereas supersymmetry requires the instanton contribution to the expectation value of a straight Wilson line in the N=4 supersymmetric SU(2) Yang-Mills theory to vanish, it is not required to vanish in the case of a…

I develop a formalism for solving topological field theories explicitly, in the case when the explicit expression of the instantons is known. I solve topological Yang-Mills theory with the $k=1$ Belavin {\sl et al.} instanton and…

Yang Mills theory in 2+1 dimensions can be expressed as an array of coupled (1+1)-dimensional principal chiral sigma models. The $SU(N)\times SU(N)$ principal chiral sigma model in 1+1 dimensions is integrable, asymptotically free and has…

We study N=2 super Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU(N) from the point of view of the Whitham hierarchy. We develop a new recursive method to compute the whole instanton expansion of the prepotential using the theta function associated…

We construct the n-instanton action for the above model with gauge group SU(2), as a function of the collective coordinates of the general self-dual configurations of Atiyah, Drinfeld, Hitchin and Manin (ADHM). We calculate the quantum…

We derive a topological action that describes the confining phase of (Super-)Yang-Mills theories with gauge group $SU(N)$, similar to the work recently carried out by Seiberg and collaborators. It encodes all the Aharonov-Bohm phases of the…

We carry out a systematic study of $SU(6)$ Yang-Mills theory endowed with fermions in the adjoint and $3$-index antisymmetric mixed-representation. The fermion bilinear in the $3$-index antisymmetric representation vanishes identically,…

The continued development of models that propose the existence of fractional topological objects in the Yang-Mills vacuum has called for a quantitative method to study the topological structure of $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ gauge theory. We present…

Two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory is a useful model of an exactly solvable gauge theory with a string theory dual at large $N$. We calculate entanglement entropy in the $1/N$ expansion by mapping the theory to a system of $N$ fermions…

We consider the $2+1$ dimensional Yang-Mills theory with gauge group $\text{SU}(N)$ on a flat 2-torus under twisted boundary conditions. We study the possibility of phase transitions (tachyonic instabilities) when $N$ and the volume vary…

We investigate the proposition that axion-Yang-Mills systems are characterized by a $3$-form gauge theory in the deep infrared regime. This hypothesis is rigorously examined by initially developing a systematic framework for analyzing…

Anomaly matching constrains low-energy physics of strongly-coupled field theories, but it is not useful at finite temperature due to contamination from high-energy states. The known exception is an 't Hooft anomaly involving one-form…

Correlation functions of chiral primary operators and their superconformal descendants in the N=4 supersymmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills theory are studied in detail in a one-instanton background and at large N. Whereas earlier calculations were…

We construct (anti)instanton solutions of a would-be q-deformed su(2) Yang-Mills theory on the quantum Euclidean space R_q^4 [the SO_q(4)-covariant noncommutative space] by reinterpreting the function algebra on the latter as a q-quaternion…

Yang-Mills instantons in a pure Yang-Mills theory in four Euclidean space can be promoted to particle-like topological solitons in d=4+1 dimensional space-time. When coupled to Higgs fields, they transform themselves in the Higgs phase into…

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…

We consider the action on instanton moduli spaces of the non-local symmetries of the self-dual Yang-Mills equations on $\mathbb{R}^4$ discovered by Chau and coauthors. Beginning with the ADHM construction, we show that a sub-algebra of the…

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…

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…

The arcane ADHM construction of Yang-Mills instantons can be very naturally understood in the framework of D-brane dynamics in string theory. In this point-of-view, the mysterious auxiliary symmetry of the ADHM construction arises as a…