Asymptotic behavior of the \(L^ 2\)-metric on moduli spaces of Yang-Mills connections (Q1898134)

Consider an SU(2) vector bundle \(E\) over a compact simply-connected oriented Riemannian 4-manifold \((M,g)\) with negative definite intersection form. It is well known that the moduli space \({\mathcal M}_k\) of anti-self-dual connection of charge \(k\) can be compactified by gluing standard 1-instantons on \(S^4\) to connections in moduli spaces of lower charge: this is the Taubes gluing procedure. The neighbourhood of a point in the boundary corresponding to the next lower moduli space is given locally by an open subset of \({\mathcal M}_{k -1} \times M \times \text{SU} (2) \times \mathbb{R}^2\) under the assumption that the deformation cohomology groups \(H^0_A\) and \(H^2_A\) vanish for \([A] \in {\mathcal M}_{k - 1}\). Let \(F\) be the diffeomorphism given by this identification. This paper proves the following estimates for the \(L^2\)-norms of the directional derivatives of \(F\) at a point \(([A], x, \rho, \lambda) \in {\mathcal M} _{k - 1} \times M \times \text{SU} (2) \times \mathbb{R}^2\): \[ |\text{DF}(B)|\leq c(1 \lambda) |B|, \quad |DF(Y)|\leq c \lambda |B|, \] \[ |\text{DF} (v)|\leq c \lambda |v|, \quad |D_\lambda F|\leq c \lambda, \] where \(B \in T_{[A]} {\mathcal M}_{k -1}\), \(Y \in T_{xM}\), \(v \in {\mathfrak s} {\mathfrak u} (2)\) and \(c\) is a constant depending only on \(A\), \(x\) and \(S(M,g)\). For the proof the author first assumes, for simplicity, that \(M\) is locally flat and then shows how to remove this assumption.