Yang-Mills- and D-instantons

TL;DR

This paper provides an elementary overview of instantons in SU(N_c) Yang-Mills theory, explores their role in N=4 supersymmetry and large N_c limit, and connects them to D-instantons in type IIB supergravity within the AdS/CFT framework.

Contribution

It offers a pedagogical explanation of instanton measures, computes instanton corrections, and explicitly checks the AdS/CFT correspondence involving D-instantons.

Findings

Computed instanton corrections to correlation functions.

Related Yang-Mills instantons to D-instantons in supergravity.

Performed explicit tests of the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Abstract

In these lectures, which are written at an elementary and pedagogical level, we discuss general aspects of (single) instantons in SU(N_c) Yang-Mills theory, and then specialize to the case of N = 4 supersymmetry and the large N_c limit. We show how to determine the measure of collective coordinates and compute instanton corrections to certain correlation functions. We then relate this to D-instantons in type IIB supergravity. By taking the D-instantons to live in an $AdS_5\times S^5$ background, we perform explicit checks of the AdS/CFT correspondence.