Linear perturbations of gauge fields

It is shown that under certain weak conditions (the vanishing of the field strength along a family of self-dual or anti-self-dual geodesic two-surfaces), in a curved or flat space-time, the linear perturbations of a given gauge field configuration can be expressed in terms of the solutions of a single second-order linear partial differential equation for a matrix potential. The particular case of the self-dual gauge fields is treated in some detail.