Atiyah-Manton construction of Skyrmions in eight dimensions

Abstract

We show that the eight-dimensional instanton solution, which satisfies the self-duality equation F ∧ F = ∗8F ∧ F, realizes the static Skyrmion configuration in eight dimensions through the Atiyah-Manton construction. The relevant energy functional of the Skyrme field is obtained by the formalism developed by Sutcliffe. By comparing the Skyrmion solution associated with the extreme of the energy, with the Atiyah-Manton solution constructed by the instantons, we find that they agree with high accuracy. This is a higher-dimensional analogue of the Atiyah-Manton construction of Skyrmions in four dimensions. Our result indicates that the instanton/Skyrmion correspondence seems to be an universal property in 4k (k = 1, 2,…) dimensions.