\(L^2\) harmonic forms on complete special holonomy manifolds (Q2423298)

This work is concerned with the understanding of harmonic \(L^2\) \(k\)-forms on a complete manifold \(M\) with special holonomy. The main result is that when \(M\) is a complete \(G_2\) (or \(\mathrm{Spin}(7)\)) manifold, whose structure 3-form is exact and comes from a 2-form with linear growth, then the harmonic \(L^2\) \(k\)-forms vanish for \(k = 0, 1, 2\). As an appliccation, the author proves that the instanton equation with square-integrable curvature has only the trivial solution.