The semi-algebraicity of the Uhlenbeck compactification of \(S^4\) instanton moduli spaces (Q2474214)

Yang-Mills moduli spaces are a powerful tool to the study topology of four manifolds. Donaldson's invariants are smooth invariants of 4-manifolds which reveal deep structure of smoothings. They are defined by counting the numbers of some subsets of the Yang-Mills moduli spaces. In general these moduli spaces are not compact, and they have a geometric way of compactification called Uhlenbeck compactification. Let \(M_{k,r}(X)\) be the moduli space of anti-self dual connections on the \(SU(r)\) bundle with \(c_2=k\) over four manifolds \(X\). Then the compactification is given by \[ \bar{M}_{k,r}(X)= \bigcup_{l=0}^r M_{k-l,r}(X) \times \text{ Sym}^l(X) \] where Sym\(^l(X)\) are \(l\) times products of \(X\) divided by the permutations. In many cases of applications, the compactifications are used supplementary to justify the counting arguments of the instanton solutions, and from the Riemannian geometry aspects, it seems that there has been little work to study geometric structure of the compactified moduli spaces themselves. This paper studies the moduli spaces over the standard four sphere from the view point of real algebraic geometry. By use of the stereo graphic projection \(S^4 \backslash pt \cong {\mathbb R}^4\), \(x \in S^4 \backslash pt\) can be identified with a point on \({\mathbb R}^4\). Then the author introduces a functonal \(\lambda: \bar{M}_{k,r} \to [0, \infty]\) by \(\lambda([A])= \int_{S^4 \backslash pt} |x|^2 |F_A|^2 \). The main theorem states that \(\lambda^{-1}([0, \delta]) , \lambda^{-1}(\delta) \subset \bar{ M}_{k,r}\) are semi algebraic and contains several variants of this. As the author points out, semi algebraicity fits with various tools of differential topology, like transversality. In fact it follows that these spaces are all Whitney stratified spaces. The proof uses the ADHM construction which reduces the structure of the moduli spaces to finite dimensional representations. Even though it seems that one cannot extend this method directly to general Riemannian four manifolds, this work suggests a new interesting direction of global analytic study of instanton moduli spaces.