Quantizing local holomorphic field theories on twistor space

Abstract

This paper studies a class of four-dimensional quantum field theories which arise by quantizing local holomorphic field theories on twistor space. These theories have some remarkable properties: in particular, all correlation functions are rational functions. The two main examples are the $WZW_4$ model of Donaldson and Losev, Moore, Nekrasov and Shatashvili, and self-dual Yang-Mills theory. In each case, anomalies on twistor space must be cancelled by a Green-Schwarz mechanism, which introduces additional fields. For $WZW_4$, this only works for $G = SO(8)$ and the additional field is gravitational. For self-dual Yang-Mills, this works for $SU(2)$, $SU(3)$, $SO(8)$ and the exceptional groups, and the additional field is an axion.