Weakly stable irreducible Yang-Mills fields over $S^4$

Abstract

Addressing Yau's conjecture (Problem 117) on $S^4$, we investigate the self-duality of weakly stable Yang-Mills fields under the assumption of irreducibility. For structure groups with a simple Lie algebra, we prove that any weakly stable irreducible connection must be either self-dual or anti-self-dual. Furthermore, we demonstrate that if the Lie algebra admits a non-trivial abelian center, no irreducible Yang-Mills fields can exist over $S^4$.