Geometric interpretation of Schwarzschild instantons

In this note we address the problem of finding Abelian instantons of finite energy on the Euclidean Schwarzschild manifold. This amounts to construct self-dual L2 harmonic 2-forms on the space. Gibbons found a non-topological L2 harmonic form in the Taub-NUT metric, leading to Abelian instantons with continuous energy. We imitate his construction in the case of the Euclidean Schwarzschild manifold and find a non-topological self-dual L2 harmonic 2-form on it. We show how this gives rise to Abelian instantons and identify them with SU(2)-instantons of Pontryagin number 2n2 found by Charap and Duff in 1977. Using results of Dodziuk and Hitchin we also calculate the full L2 harmonic space for the Euclidean Schwarzschild manifold.