Scattering off of an instanton (Q1079832)

We consider the scattering of a classical colored particle off an instanton. That is, we investigate Wong's equations (or equivalently, the Kaluza-Klein geodesic equations) for a color SU(2) particle under the influence of a Euclidean instanton. We solve the equations in the limit in which the instanton becomes singular. Our main result is that particles with head-on trajectories scatter off the instanton with a scattering angle of \(\pi\) /3. This angle is independent of the magnitude of the color charge and velocity of the particle as long as both are nonzero. The plane in which the scattering takes place is determined by the particle's initial position and color charge. We also solve the equations for the geodesics for the corresponding (singular) Kaluza-Klein metric on \(S^ 7\).