Geometric aspects of the Kapustin–Witten equations

Abstract

This expository paper introduces the Kapustin–Witten equations to mathematicians. We discuss the connections between the complex Yang–Mills equations and the Kapustin–Witten equations. In addition, we show the relation between the Kapustin–Witten equations, the moment map condition and the gradient Chern–Simons flow. The new results in the paper correspond to estimates on the solutions to the Kapustin–Witten equations given an estimate on the complex part of the connection. This leaves open the problem of obtaining global estimates on the complex part of the connection.