Classical and Quantum Instantons in Yang-Mills Theory in the Background of de Sitter Spacetime

Instantons and their quantisation in pure Yang-Mills theory formulated in the background of de Sitter spacetime represented by spatially-closed ($k = 1$) Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric are discussed. As for the classical treatment of the instanton physics, first, explicit instanton solutions are found and next, quantities like Pontryagin index and the semiclassical approximation to the inter-vacua tunnelling amplitude are evaluated. The Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem is checked as well by constructing explicitly the normalizable fermion zero modes in this de Sitter spacetime instanton background. Finally, following the kink quantisation scheme originally proposed by Dashen, Hasslacher and Neveu, the quantisation of our instanton is performed. Of particular interest is the estimate of the lowest quantum correction to the inter-vacua tunnelling amplitude arising from the quantisation of the instanton. It turns out that the inter-vacua tunnelling amplitude gets enhanced upon quantising the instanton.