Perturbation theory with instantons

We develop “perturbation theory” rules for calculating the effect of instantons in a pure Yang-Mills theory with no fermions, in the “dilute gas” approximation in which the N-instanton solution is assumed to be the sum of N widely separated one-instanton solutions. These rules are then used to compute the gluon propagator and proper vertex function including all orders of the instanton interaction but only to lowest order in the gluon coupling. It is to be expected that such an approximation is valid only for momenta q larger than the physical mass μ. The result is that in this regime instantons cause variations in the propagator and vertex of the form where b is the coefficient in the expansion of the β function: β = bg³ + 3. .