Yang-Mills fields and random holonomy along Brownian bridges (Q1394526)

Yang-Mills connections in a vector bundle \(E\) over a Riemannian manifold \(M\) are the critical points of the Yang-Mills action \[ YM (\nabla) = \int_M \|R^\nabla \|^2 d vol \] where \(\nabla\) is a metric connection in \(E\) and \(R^\nabla\) is the curvature \(2\)-form associated to \(E\). Characterizations of Yang-Mills connections in terms of holonomy of parallel transport in \(E\) along a Brownian motion on \(M\) have been given by several authors. In this paper, two characterizations of Yang-Mills connections are provided in relation with the variations of the stochastic parallel transport along Brownian bridges on \(M\). The first characterization is in terms of the martingale property of the covariant derivative of parallel transport along Brownian bridges transported back to the starting point. The other characterization uses a Taylor expansion for the average rotation of stochastic parallel transport in \(E\) along small rescaled Brownian bridges, namely a connection is Yang-Mills if and only if all drift terms up to the order \(3\) vanish in this expansion. No compatibility of the connections with a metric on \(E\) is required.