Symmetric instantons and the ADHM construction (Q2365001)

The present paper is devoted to the study of instanton bundles over the standard four-sphere \(S^4\). Such an instanton bundle is a rank-two Hermitian vector bundle with a unitary connection of anti-self-dual curvature. Special instanton bundles, namely the so-called instantons with quadrupole symmetry, or briefly symmetric instantons, have been introduced a few years ago by \textit{J. E. Avron}, \textit{L. Sadun}, the second author and \textit{B. Simon} [Commun. Math. Phys. 124, No. 4, 595-627 (1989; Zbl 0830.57020)]. It has become known, in the meantime, that the classification of symmetric instantons is given by pairs \((n_+,n_-)\) of odd positive integers related to the second Chern number of the instanton by the formula \(8c_2= n^2_+-n^2_-\), and that there are no symmetric instantons with \(n_-\geq 3\) [cf. \textit{L. Sadun} and the second author, ibid. 145, No. 2, 363-391 (1992; Zbl 0765.53020)]. In the present article, the authors provide a constructive classification of all symmetric instantons of the solely interesting type \((n_+,1)\). Using the Ward correspondence between instantons and holomorphic vector bundles on \(P^3_{\mathbb{C}}\) as well as the Atiyah-Drinfeld-Hitchin-Manin construction (ADHM construction) via monads [cf. \textit{M. F. Atiyah}, \textit{N. J. Hitchin} and \textit{I. M. Singer}, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Ser. A 362, 425-461 (1978; Zbl 0389.53011)], it is proved that there is precisely one symmetric instanton on each of the bundles over \(S^4\) with quadrupole symmetry of type \((n_+,1)\), for any odd natural number \(n_+\), and that its ADHM monad can be explicitly constructed. In view of its constructive proof, this theorem is particularly valuable for a deeper understanding of the geometry of the Yang-Mills equations over \(S^4\), especially with regard to the problem of the existence of solutions that are neither selfdual nor anti-selfdual. Also, instantons with quadrupole symmetry have recently gained a remarkable significance due to their link with isomonodromic deformations of linear ordinary differential equations and with certain Einstein metrics [cf. \textit{N. Hitchin}, J. Differ. Geom. 42, No. 1, 30-112 (1995; Zbl 0861.53049)]. The paper is written in a very thorough, rigorous and lucid manner, providing a welcome amount of motivating remarks, background material and illustrating examples.