Deformations of associative submanifolds with boundary (Q624324)

Let \(M\) be a topological \(G_{2}\)-manifold and \(Y \subset M\) a compact associative submanifold whose boundary \(\partial Y\) is contained in a fixed submanifold \(X \subset M\). The authors prove that the space of infinitesimal associative deformations of a compact associative submanifold \(Y\) with boundary in a coassociative submanifold \(X\) is the solution space of an elliptic problem. For a connected boundary \(\partial Y\) of genus \(g\), the index is given by \(\int_{\partial Y}c_{1}(\nu_X) + 1-g\), where \(\nu_X\) denotes the orthogonal complement of \(T \partial Y\) in \(TX_{\partial Y}\) and \(c_{1}( \nu_X )\) the first Chern class of \(\nu_X\) with respect to its natural complex structure. Moreover, they exhibit explicit examples of non-trivial index.