On Y M₂ measures and area-preserving diffeomorphisms

For a given gauge group and compact Riemannian two-manifold, it is known that the associated Yang-Mills measure can be defined directly as a finitely additive measure on the space of connections, and this finitely additive measure is invariant with respect to SDiff, the group of all area-preserving diffeomorphisms of the surface. The first question we address is whether this symmetry essentially characterizes the projection of the Yang-Mills measure to the space of gauge equivalence classes. The proper formulation of this question entails the construction of an SDiff-equivariant completion of the space of continuous connections, such that the projection of the Yang-Mills measure to the space of gauge equivalence classes has a countably additive extension. We also consider the coupling of the Yang-Mills measure to determinants of Dirac operators. The basic problems are to prove that the coupled measure is absolutely continuous with respect to the background Yang-Mills measure, to find a reasonable formula for the Radon-Nikodym derivative, and to analyze the action of SDiff.