The Partonic Nature of Instantons

Understand

In both Yang-Mills theories and sigma models, instantons are endowed with degrees of freedom associated to their scale size and orientation.

• It has long been conjectured that these degrees of freedom have a dual interpretation as the positions of partonic constituents of the instanton.
• These conjectures are usually framed in d=3+1 and d=1+1 dimensions respectively where the partons are supposed to be responsible for confinement and other strong coupling phenomena.
• We revisit this partonic interpretation of instantons in the context of d=4+1 and d=2+1 dimensions.