ADHM construction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ADHM construction or monad construction is the construction of all instantons using method of linear algebra by Michael Atiyah, Vladimir G. Drinfel'd, Nigel. J. Hitchin, Yuri I. Manin in their paper Construction of Instantons.

[edit] ADHM data

An ADHM data consists of the following objects:

  • complex vector spaces V and W of dimension k and N,
  • k × k matrix B1, B2, k × N matrix I and N × k matrix J,
  • \mu_r = [B_1,B_1^\dagger]+[B_2,B_2^\dagger]+II^\dagger-J^\dagger J,
  • \displaystyle\mu_c = [B_1,B_2]+IJ.

Then ADHM construction claims that, given certain regularity conditions,

  • Given B1, B2, I, J such that μr = μc = 0, an Anti-Self-Dual instanton of charge N and instanton number k can be constructed,
  • All Anti-Self-Dual instantons can be obtained in this way.

[edit] The construction formula

Let x be the 4-dimensional Euclidean spacetime coordinates written in quaternionic notation x_{ij}=\begin{pmatrix}z_2&z_1\\-\bar{z_1}&\bar{z_2}\end{pmatrix}.

Consider the 2k × (N+2k) matrix

\Delta= \begin{pmatrix}I&B_2+z_2&B_1+z_1\\J^\dagger&-B_1^\dagger-\bar{z_1}&B_2^\dagger+\bar{z_2}\end{pmatrix}.

Then the conditions \displaystyle\mu_r=\mu_c=0 are equivalent to the factorization condition

\Delta\Delta^\dagger=\begin{pmatrix}f^{-1}&0\\0&f^{-1}\end{pmatrix} where f(x) is a k × k hermitian matrix.

Then a hermition projection operator P can be constructed as

P=\Delta^\dagger\begin{pmatrix}f&0\\0&f\end{pmatrix}\Delta.

The nullspace of Δ(x) is of N dimension for generic x. The basis vector for this null-space can be assembled into an (N+2k) × N matrix U(x) with orthonormalization condition UU=1.

A regularity condition on the rank of Δ guaranteed the completeness condition

P+UU^\dagger=1

The anti-selfdual connection is then constructed from U by the formula

A_m=U^\dagger \partial_m U.

[edit] References

  • Construction of Instantons, Michael Atiyah, Vladimir G. Drinfel'd, Nigel. J. Hitchin, Yuri I. Manin, Phys. Lett. A65 (1978) 185-187
  • Instantons in Gauge Theory by M. Shifman.
  • On the Construction of Monopoles