• DOI:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/07/015
• Corpus ID: 16530907

Instantons, fermions and Chern-Simons terms

@article{Collie2008InstantonsFA,
  title={Instantons, fermions and Chern-Simons terms},
  author={Benjamin Collie and David Tong},
  journal={Journal of High Energy Physics},
  year={2008},
  volume={2008},
  pages={015-015}
}

• Benjamin Collie, D. Tong
• Published 10 April 2008
• Physics
• Journal of High Energy Physics

In five spacetime dimensions, instantons are finite energy, solitonic particles. We describe the dynamics of these objects in the presence of a Chern-Simons interaction. For U(N) instantons, we show that the 5d Chern-Simons term induces a corresponding Chern-Simons term in the ADHM quantum mechanics. For SU(N) instantons, we provide a description in terms of geodesic motion on the instanton moduli space, modified by the presence of a magnetic field. We show that this magnetic field is equal to the first Chern character of an index bundle. All of these results are derived by a simple method which follows the fate of zero modes as fermions are introduced, made heavy, and subsequently integrated out.