Morse index stability for p-Yang-Mills connections

Abstract

We establish the lower semi continuity of the Morse index and the upper continuity of the Morse Index plus nullity of sequences of critical points of the Sacks-Uhlenbeck type relaxation of the Yang-Mills Energy in 4 dimension. The result is known not to be true in general for the ``cousin problem'' of hamonic maps from surfaces into arbitrary manifolds. This result is stressing the more stable behaviour of Yang-Mills Fields compare to harmonic maps as observed in other contexts such as the flow. The Morse Index control at the limit of critical points to Sacks Uhlenbeck relaxations of Yang-Mills Lagrangian is a central result in the implementation of minmax operation on this Lagrangian.