nLab
instanton

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Physics

physics

Contents

Idea

In physics an instanton is a field configuration with a “topological twist”: not in the connected component of the trivial field configurations.

The term derives from the special case of instantons on a sphere but modeled as field configurations on a Euclidean space constrained to vanish asymptotically. These look like solutions localized in spacetime: “at an instant”.

Examples

Literature

See also literature at Yang-Mills instanton.

  • Dan Freed, Karen Uhlenbeck?, Instantons and four-manifolds, Springer-Verlag, (1991)

  • Nicholas Manton, Paul M. Sutcliffe, Topological solitons, Cambridge Monographs on Math. Physics, gBooks

  • Werner Nahm, Self-dual monopoles and calorons, in Group theoretical methods in physics (Trieste, 1983), pages 189-200. Springer, Berlin (1984) (journal)

Revised on January 10, 2012 15:09:52 by Urs Schreiber (89.204.139.97)
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