Euclidean SYM theories by time reduction and special holonomy manifolds

Euclidean supersymmetric theories are obtained from Minkowskian theories by performing a reduction in the time direction. This procedure elucidates certain mysterious features of Zuminoʹs N = 2 model in four dimensions, provides manifestly hermitian Euclidean counterparts of all non-mimimal SYM theories, and is also applicable to supergravity theories. We reanalyse the twists of the 4d N = 2 and N = 4 models from this point of view. Other applications include SYM theories on special holonomy manifolds. In particular, we construct a twisted SYM theory on Kähler 3-folds and clarify the structure of SYM theory on hyper-Kähler 4-folds.