Merons and instantons in laplacian abelian and center gauges in continuum Yang–Mills theory

Meron, instanton and instanton–antiinstanton field configurations are studied in continuum Yang–Mills theory in laplacian abelian and center gauges in order to detect their monopole and center vortex content. While a single instanton does not give rise to a center vortex, we find center vortices for merons. Furthermore we provide evidence, that merons can be interpreted as intersection points of center vortices. For the instanton–antiinstanton pair, we find a center vortex enclosing their centers, which carries two monopole loops.