Conformal properties of pseudoparticle configurations

Abstract

The known Euclidean Yang-Mills pseudoparticle solutions with Pontryagin index $n$ are parametrized by $5n$ constants describing the size and location of each pseudoparticle. By insisting on conformal covariance of the solutions, we show that more general solutions exist—they are parametrized by $5n+4$ constants. We further demonstrate that the additional degrees of freedom are not gauge artifacts and correspond to a new degeneracy of pseudoparticle configurations.