Octonionic Yang-Mills instanton on quaternionic line bundle of \(Spin(7)\) holonomy (Q1576285)

Instantons and solitons have played a prominent role in our understanding of non-perturbative dynamics and dualities in gauge field theories and string theory. It has been observed that fundamental examples of topological solutions are associated with the four Hopf fibrations of spheres, which in turn are related to the division algebras of real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions and octonions. The kink solution in \(1+1\) dimensions, the Direc monopole in three dimensions and the \(SU(2)\) Yang-Mills instanton in four dimensions correspond to the first three algebras. In this paper the author considers eight-dimensional instantons that correspond to the octonions. The total space of the spinor bundle on the four-dimensional sphere \(S^4\) is a quaternionic line bundle that admits a metric of \(\text{Spin}(7)\) holonomy. The authors consider octonionic Yang-Mills instanton on this eight-dimensional gravitational instanton. They propose an ansatz for \(\text{Spin}(7)\) Yang-Mills field and derive a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The solutions are classified according to the asymptotic behavior at infinity. A complete solution is given when the gauge group is reduced to a product of \(SU(2)\) subalgebras in \(\text{Spin}(7)\).