2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/51265The relation between defects of Abelian gauges and instantons is discussed for explicit examples in the Laplacian Abelian gauge. The defect coming from an instanton is pointlike and becomes a monopole loop with twist upon perturbation. The interplay between magnetic charge, twist and instanton number - encoded as a Hopf invariant - is investigated with the help of a new method, an auxiliary Abelian fibre bundle.Talk given at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Confinement, Topology, and other Non-Perturbative Aspects of QCD", January 21-27, 2002, Stara Lesna, Slovakia; 8 pages, 4 eps-figures, uses crckbked.cls; v2: minor changesHigh Energy Physics - TheoryHigh Energy Physics - Latticetext