Yang-Mills instantons from gravitational instantons

Abstract

We show that every gravitational instantons are SU(2) Yang-Mills instantons on a Ricci-flat four manifold although the reverse is not necessarily true. It is shown that gravitational instantons satisfy exactly the same self-duality equation of SU(2) Yang-Mills instantons on the Ricci-flat manifold determined by the gravitational instantons themselves. We explicitly check the correspondence with several examples and discuss their topological properties. © SISSA 2011.