No label defined (Q4463334)

Let \(P(M,G)\) be a principal fibre bundle over a compact Riemannian manifold \(M\) with a compact Lie group \(G\) as structure group. It is well-known that the so-called Yang-Mills connections in \(P(M,G)\) minimize the Yang-Mills action functional, and therefore provide solutions to the classical Yang-Mills field equation. Thus one of the crucial problems in general Yang-Mills theory is to find Yang-Mills connections in principal \(G\)-bundles, or -- even better -- to obtain conditions for a connection in a principal \(G\)-bundle to be a Yang-Mills connection. The latter problem, which in fact is the actually relevant one in physical Yang-Mills theory, bears considerable difficulties because of its nonlinearity. The paper under review is an attempt to tackle this original problem in Yang-Mills theory in the special case of homogeneous principal fibre bundles. Concretely, the authors consider a compact connected Lie group \(K\) of automorphisms of a principal fibre bundle \(P(M,G)\) acting transitively on the set of fibres. In this set-up,they derive a necessary and sufficient condition for a \(K\)-invariant connection in \(P(M,G)\) to be a Yang-Mills connection, therefore providing a solution to the Yang-Mills equation,and they corroborate this theoretical approach by some examples where \(K= \text{SU}(3)\), \(G= \text{SU}(2)\) and \(M= \mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^2\).