Energy gap for Yang-Mills connections. II: Arbitrary closed Riemannian manifolds

closed Riemannian manifolds Coulomb gauge energy gaps flat connections gauge theory Lojasiewicz-Simon gradient inequality Morse theory on Banach manifolds Uhlenbeck curvature estimates Yang-Mills connections

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Moduli problems for differential geometric structures (58D27) Variational problems concerning extremal problems in several variables; Yang-Mills functionals (58E15) Yang-Mills and other gauge theories in mechanics of particles and systems (70S15) Yang-Mills and other gauge theories in quantum field theory (81T13)

Abstract: In this sequel to [arXiv:1412.4114], we prove an

L^{d / 2}

energy gap result for Yang-Mills connections on principal

G

-bundles,

P

, over arbitrary, closed, Riemannian, smooth manifolds of dimension

d g e q 2

. We apply our version of the Lojasiewicz-Simon gradient inequality [arXiv:1409.1525, arXiv:1510.03815] to remove a positivity constraint on a combination of the Ricci and Riemannian curvatures in a previous

L^{d / 2}

-energy gap result due to Gerhardt (2010) and a previous

L^{i} n f t y

-energy gap result due to Bourguignon, Lawson, and Simons (1981, 1979), as well as an

L^{2}

-energy gap result due to Nakajima (1987) for a Yang-Mills connection over the sphere,

S^{d}

, but with an arbitrary Riemannian metric. The main correction in this version involves replacement of the role of Corollary 4.3 due to Uhlenbeck (1985) and Theorem 5.1 due to the author in the published version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aim.2017.03.023 by that of Theorems 1 and 9 due to the author in arXiv:1906.03954.

Review text

The paper extends the 4D energy gap result of Part I [Zbl 1456.58014] to arbitrary dimensions \(d\geq2\). The precise statement is this. Let \(G\) be a compact Lie group, and \(P\) be a principal \(G\)-bundle over a closed smooth \(d\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold \((X,g)\). Then there is \(\varepsilon=\varepsilon(d,g,G)>0\) such that any smooth Yang-Mills connection on \(P\) with \(||F_A||_{L^{d/2}(X)}\leq\varepsilon\) is flat. Previous \(L^{d/2}\) result of Gerhardt, and \(L^\infty\) result of Bourguignon-Lawson-Simons imposed a positivity constraint on a combination of the Riemannian and Ricci curvatures, \(Ric_g\wedge I+2Riem_g\). Nakajima proved a similar \(L^2\) result without assuming positivity, but only for spheres \(S^d\), albeit with arbitrary metrics. The idea of proof is quite different from the previous approaches. Intuitively, without the gap there would be non-minimal Yang-Mills connections with \(L^{d/2}\) energy arbitrarily close to zero, which should violate the analyticity of the Yang-Mills \(L^2\) energy functional. This last property is expressed by the Łojasiewicz-Simon gradient inequality established by Råde for \(d=2,3\), and generalized by the author and Maridakis to \(d\geq2\). The remaining ingredients of the proof are due to Uhlenbeck: a priori estimate for the curvature of a Yang-Mills connection; local existence of a Coulomb gauge for a connection with curvature small in \(L^{d/2}\) ; existence of a flat connection \(\Gamma\) given a Sobolev connection \(A\) with small in \(L^p\) curvature (for \(p>\frac12\dim X\)), together with a global gauge transformation of \(A\) to Coulomb gauge with respect to \(\Gamma\), and a Sobolev estimate for the distance between \(A\) and \(\Gamma\). Other approaches and prospects for extending the main theorem from closed to complete Riemannian manifolds are discussed. Appendices contain simplified proofs of many technical results under additional assumptions.

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(24)

This page was built for publication: Energy gap for Yang-Mills connections. II: Arbitrary closed Riemannian manifolds

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q526360)