On the instantons and the hypermultiplet mass of N=2* super Yang-Mills on S^4

Abstract

We show that the physical N=4 super Yang-Mills theory on a four-sphere with an arbitrary gauge group receives no instanton contributions, by clarifying the relation between the hypermultiplet mass and the equivariant parameters of the mass-deformed theory preserving N=2 supersymmetry. The correct relation also implies that N=4 superconformal Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU(2) corresponds to Liouville theory on a torus with the insertion of a non-trivial operator, rather than the identity as have been claimed in the literature.