A Twistor Space Action for Yang-Mills Theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a twistor space formulation for Yang-Mills theory, showing how a Chern-Simons-like action on a graded twistor space can describe both self-dual and full Yang-Mills theories in four-dimensional Euclidean space.

Contribution

It introduces a novel twistor space action that captures full Yang-Mills theory, extending previous self-dual formulations to include the complete theory.

Findings

Equivalence between twistor space Chern-Simons theory and self-dual Yang-Mills.

Extension of the twistor action to describe full Yang-Mills theory.

Demonstration of a geometric framework connecting twistor space and Yang-Mills dynamics.

Abstract

We consider the twistor space ${\cal P}^6\cong{\mathbb R}^4{\times}{\mathbb C}P^1$ of ${\mathbb R}^4$ with a non-integrable almost complex structure ${\cal J}$ such that the canonical bundle of the almost complex manifold $({\cal P}^6, {\cal J})$ is trivial. It is shown that ${\cal J}$-holomorphic Chern-Simons theory on a real $(6|2)$-dimensional graded extension ${\cal P}^{6|2}$ of the twistor space ${\cal P}^6$ is equivalent to self-dual Yang-Mills theory on Euclidean space ${\mathbb R}^4$ with Lorentz invariant action. It is also shown that adding a local term to a Chern-Simons-type action on ${\cal P}^{6|2}$, one can extend it to a twistor action describing full Yang-Mills theory.