A construction of \(\mathrm{Spin}(7)\)-instantons (Q694718)

\textit{C. Lewis} [Spin(7)-instantons. Oxford: Oxford University (PhD Thesis) (1998)] constructed Spin(7)-instantons on Joyce's Spin(7)-manifolds of the first type. Tanaka constructs Spin(7)-instantons on Joyce's Spin(7)-manifolds of the second type in this paper. He starts from a Calabi-Yau 4-orbifold \(Y\) with finitely many singular points \(p_1, \dots, p_k\) along with an anti-holomorphic involution \(\sigma\) fixing only the singular points. One obtains a Spin(7)-orbifold \(Z=Y/\sigma\) with finitely many singular points \(p_1, \dots, p_k\). There are two ways of obtaining crepant resolutions of a neighborhood of each singular point in \(Y\), leading to two ALE Spin(7)-manifolds. At each singular point of \(Z\), Tanaka glues either of these manifolds. Call \(M\) the resulting space. Tanaka deforms its Spin(7)-structure into a torsion-free Spin(7)-structure, making it into a Spin(7)-manifold. At this point one can consider Spin(7)-instantons over it. Tanaka considers complex vector bundles on \(Y\) and the crepant resolutions at each singular point of \(Y\), that he equips with Hermitian-Einstein connections. The infinitesimal deformation of the Hermitian-Einstein connections on each bundle is given by a complex and an associated linear operator. Under conditions on the cohomology of these complexes and the linear operators, Tanaka constructs a Spin(7)-instanton on the vector bundle \(E\) over \(M\) resulting from gluing the bundles over \(Y\) and the crepant resolutions. The proof amounts to constructing a Spin(7)-instanton iteratively using some estimates, consequences of the linear operators on the ALE manifolds being Fredholm. It is important to note that a scaling parameter \(t \in (0,1]\) is introduced, that \(M\) depends on it, and that the result holds for small values of \(t\). An example is worked out in full.