Exact gauge fields from anti-de Sitter space

Abstract

In 1977 L\"uscher found a class of SO(4)-symmetric SU(2) Yang-Mills solutions in Minkowski space, which have been rederived 40 years later by employing the isometry $S^3\cong\mathrm{SU}(2)$ and conformally mapping SU(2)-equivariant solutions of the Yang-Mills equations on (two copies of) de Sitter space $\mathrm{dS}_4\cong\mathbb{R}{\times}S^3$. Here we present the noncompact analog of this construction via $\mathrm{AdS}_3\cong\mathrm{SU}(1,1)$. On (two copies of) anti-de Sitter space $\mathrm{AdS}_4\cong\mathbb{R}{\times}\mathrm{AdS}_3$ we write down SU(1,1)-equivariant Yang-Mills solutions and conformally map them to $\mathbb{R}^{1,3}$. This yields a two-parameter family of exact SU(1,1) Yang-Mills solutions on Minkowski space, whose field strengths are essentially rational functions of Cartesian coordinates. Gluing the two AdS copies happens on a $\mathrm{dS}_3$ hyperboloid in Minkowski space, and our Yang-Mills configurations are singular on a two-dimensional hyperboloid $\mathrm{dS}_3\cap\mathbb{R}^{1,2}$. This renders their action and the energy infinite, although the field strengths fall off fast asymptotically except along the lightcone. We also construct Abelian solutions, which share these properties but are less symmetric and of zero action.