The second variation of area of minimal surfaces in four-manifolds.
The geometric description of Yang–Mills theories and their configuration space is reviewed. The presence of singularities in M is explained and some of their properties are described. The singularity structure is analysed in detail for structure group SU(2). This review is based on [28].
For a G-covering Y → Y/G = X induced by a properly discontinuous action of a group G on a topological space Y, there is a natural action of π(X,x) on the set F of points in Y with nontrivial stabilizers in G. We study the covering of X obtained from the universal covering of X and the left action of π(X,x) on F. We find a formula for the number of fixed points of an element g ∈ G which is a generalization of Macbeath's formula applied to an automorphism of a Riemann surface. We give a new method...