arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Michael K. Murray.
We give a characterisation of central extensions of a Lie group G by the non-zero complex numbers in terms of a differential two-form on G and a differential one-form on GxG. This is applied to the case of the central extension of the loop group.
We consider the notion of stable isomorphism of bundle gerbes. It has the consequence that the stable isomorphism classes of bundle gerbes over a manifold M are in bijective correspondence with H^3(M, Z). Stable isomorphism sheds light on the local theory of bundle gerbes and enables us to develop a classifying theory for bundle gerbes using results of Gajer on BC^x bundles.
The discrete Nahm equations, a system of matrix valued difference equations, arose in the work of Braam and Austin on half-integral mass hyperbolic monopoles. We show that the discrete Nahm equations are completely integrable in a natural sense: to any solution we can associate a spectral curve and a holomorphic line-bundle over the spectral curve, such that the discrete-time DN evolution corresponds to walking in the Jacobian of the spectral curve in a straight line through the line-bundle with steps of a fixed size. Some of the implications for hyperbolic monopoles are also discussed.
A systematic consideration of the problem of the reduction and extension of the structure group of a principal bundle is made and a variety of techniques in each case are explored and related to one another. We apply these to the study of the Dixmier-Douady class in various contexts including string structures, U-res bundles and other examples motivated by considerations from quantum field theory.
The information metric arises in statistics as a natural inner product on a space of probability distributions. In general this inner product is positive semi-definite but is potentially degenerate. By associating to an instanton its energy density, we can examine the information metric {\bf g} on the moduli spaces $\M$ of self-dual connections over Riemannian 4-manifolds. Compared with the more widely known $L^2$ metric, the information metric better reflects the conformal invariance of the self-dual Yang-Mills equations, and seems to have better completeness properties. In the case of $SU(2)$ instantons on $S^4$ of charge one, {\bf g} is known to be the hyperbolic metric on the five-ball. We show more generally that for charge-one $SU(2)$ instantons over $1$-connected, positive-definite manifolds, {\bf g} is nondegenerate and complete in the collar region of $\M$, and is `asymptotically hyperbolic' there; {\bf g} vanishes at the cone points of $\M$. We give explicit formulae for the metric on the space of instantons of charge one on $\C P_2$.
Recently K. Lee, E.J. Weinberg and P. Yi in CU-TP-739, hep-th/9602167, calculated the asymptotic metric on the moduli space of (1, 1, ..., 1) BPS monopoles and conjectured that it was globally exact. I lend support to this conjecture by showing that the metric on the corresponding space of Nahm data is the same as the metric they calculate.
Just as $\Cstar$ principal bundles provide a geometric realisation of two-dimensional integral cohomology; gerbes or sheaves of groupoids, provide a geometric realisation of three dimensional integral cohomology through their Dixmier-Douady class. I consider an alternative, related, geometric realisation of three dimensional cohomology called a bundle gerbe. Every bundle gerbe gives rise to a gerbe and most of the well-known examples examples of gerbes are bundle gerbes. I discuss the properties of bundle gerbes, in particular bundle gerbe connections and curvature and their associated Dixmier-Douady class.
Donaldson has shown that the moduli space of monopoles $M_k$ is diffeomorphic to the space $\Rat_k$ of based rational maps from the two-sphere to itself. We use this diffeomorphism to give an explicit description of the bundle on $\Rat_k$ obtained by pushing out the index bundle from $M_k$. This gives an alternative and more explicit proof of some earlier results of Cohen and Jones.