Nahm transform of doubly-periodic instantons

Abstract

This work concerns the study of certain finite-energy solutions of the anti-self-dual Yang-Mills equations on Euclidean 4-dimensional space which are periodic in two directions, so-called doubly-periodic instantons. We establish a circle of ideas involving equivalent analytical and algebraic-geometric descriptions of these objects. In the first introductory chapter we provide an overview of the problem and state the main results to be proven in the thesis. In chapter 2, we study the asymptotic behaviour of the connections we are concerned with, and show that the coupled Dirac operator is Fredholm. After laying these foundations, we are ready to address the main topic of the thesis, the construction of a Nahm transform of doubly-periodic instantons. By combining differential-geometric and holomorphic methods, we show in chapters 3 through 5 that doubly-periodic instantons correspond bijectively to certain singular Higgs pairs, i.e. meromorphic solutions of Hitchin's equations defined over an elliptic curve. The circle of ideas is finally closed in chapter 8. We start by presenting a construction due to Friedman, Morgan and Witten that associates to each doubly-periodic instanton a spectral pair consisting of a Riemann surface plus a line bundle over it. On the other hand, it was shown by Hitchin that Higgs pairs are equivalent to a similar set of data. We show that the Friedman, Morgan and Witten spectral pair associated with a doubly-periodic instanton coincides with the Hitchin spectral pair associated with its Nahm transform. (This thesis contains the papers math.DG/9909069, math.DG/9910120 and math.AG/9909146.)