Contact manifolds, contact instantons, and twistor geometry

Abstract

Recently, Källén & Zabzine computed the partition function of a twisted supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on the five-dimensional sphere using localisation techniques. Key to their construction is a five-dimensional generalisation of the instanton equation to which they refer as the contact instanton equation. Subject of this article is the twistor construction of this equation when formulated on K-contact manifolds and the discussion of its integrability properties. We also present certain extensions to higher dimensions and supersymmetric generalisations. © SISSA 2012.