Evidence for fractional topological charge in SU(2) pure Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

We investigate the spectral flows of the hermitian Wilson-Dirac operator in the fundamental and adjoint representations on two ensembles of pure SU(2) gauge field configurations at the same physical volume. We find several background gauge field configurations where the index of the hermitian Wilson-Dirac operator in the adjoint representation is not four times the index in the fundamental representation. This could imply a topological basis for the existence of degenerate vacua in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories.