A generalization of the notion of instanton (Q1385068)

The author proposes the following generalization of the notion of instanton (that, is a connection in a principal bundle over a Riemannian 4-manifold with self-dual curvature 2-form). Let \(G\) be a subgroup of the orthogonal group \(SO_n\) with Lie algebra \(\mathfrak g\) such that the normalizer \(N(G)\) is connected and \(P \to M\) an \(N(G)\)-structure on a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\). A connection \(A\) in a principal bundle \(Q\) with compact structure group \(K\) is called an instanton if its curvature \(R_A\) is a section of the subbundle \[ \text{ad}Q \otimes {\mathfrak g}(M)\subset \text{ad}Q \otimes \Lambda^2 \] of the bundle of \(\text{ad}Q\)-valued 2-forms on \(M\). Here \(\mathfrak g (M) = P \times_{N(G)}\mathfrak g \) and this bundle is identified by means of the metric with a subbundle of the bundle \(\Lambda^2\) of 2-forms. To justify the definition, the author considers the sequence \[ 0 \to A^0 = \Lambda^0 \to A^1 =\Lambda^1 \to A^2 \to \dots \tag{*} \] where \(A^k\) is the orthogonal complement to \(\mathfrak g (M) \wedge \Lambda^{k-2}\) in \(\Lambda^k\) and the arrows are induced from exterior differentiation by composing with the orthogonal projections. He proves that if the Levi-Civita connection of \(g\) preserves \(P\) and, hence, the holonomy group \(\text{Hol}(g) \subset N(G)\), then (*) is a complex. Moreover, tensorizing it with \(\text{ad}Q\) for some principal bundle \(Q\) with an instanton connection \(A\), the author gets the complex \[ 0 \to \text{ad}Q \to \text{ad}Q\otimes A^1 \to \text{ad}Q\otimes A^2 \to \dots\tag{**} \] It is elliptic if (*) is elliptic and its first cohomology represents the space of infinitesimal deformations of the instanton \(A\) preserving the instanton condition, modulo gauge equivalence. The author proves case by case that this is true if the metric \(g\) has holonomy \(G = SU_m, Sp_m, G_2, \text{Spin}_7\). These results are a generalization of the results of S. Salamon for the quaternionic case and of D. D. Joyce for \(G =G_2\).