Geometry and symmetries of Hermitian-Einstein and instanton connection moduli spaces

Abstract

We investigate the geometry of the moduli spaces $\mathscr{M}_{\HE}^*(M^{2n})$ of Hermitian-Einstein irreducible connections on a vector bundle $E$ over a K\"ahler with torsion (KT) manifold $M^{2n}$ that admits holomorphic and $\h\nabla$-covariantly constant vector fields, where $\h\nabla$ is the connection with skew-symmetric torsion $H$. We demonstrate that such vector fields induce an action on $\mathscr{M}_{\HE}^*(M^{2n})$ that leaves both the metric and complex structure invariant. Moreover, if an additional condition is satisfied, the induced vector fields are covariantly constant with respect to the connection with skew-symmetric torsion $\h{\mathcal{ D}}$ on $\mathscr{M}_{\HE}^*(M^{2n})$. We demonstrate that in the presence of such vector fields, the geometry of $\mathscr{M}_{\HE}^*(M^{2n})$ can be modelled on that of holomorphic toric principal bundles with base space KT manifolds and give some examples. We also extend our analysis to the moduli spaces $\mathscr{M}_{\asd}^*(M^{4})$ of instanton connections on vector bundles over KT, bi-KT (generalised K\"ahler) and hyper-K\"ahler with torsion (HKT) manifolds $M^4$. We find that the geometry of $\mathscr{M}_{\asd}^*(S^3\times S^1)$ can be modelled on that of principal bundles with fibre $S^3\times S^1$ over Quaternionic K\"ahler manifolds with torsion (QKT). In addition motivated by applications to AdS/CFT, we explore the (superconformal) symmetry algebras of two-dimensional sigma models with target spaces such moduli spaces.