Self-dual Yang-Mills equations and Taubes' theorem (Q2266234)

The author presents at length some modifications of the proof of Taubes' theorem for irreducible self-dual connections over a compact oriented 4- dimensional Riemannian manifold. Instead of starting from a topological assumption on the base manifold, an induction procedure allows the author to derive the theorem on a bundle with index \(k+1\) knowing its validity on a bundle with index k. The proof follows very closely that of C. Taubes. Emphasis is put on the use of the irreducibility condition. There are indeed manifolds (e.g., the complex projective plane) over which the bundle with \(k=1\) is known not to admit any self-dual connection. Notice that C. Taubes has extended his original theorem to cover this case, giving lower bounds on the index of the bundle for which self-dual connections exist. (In many formulae involving norms, notice that squares have often been misplaced by the printer creating a possible confusion with the indices of Sobolev spaces used.)