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

Meron, instanton and instanton-antiinstanton field configurations are studi ed in continuum Yang-Mills theory in laplacian abelian and center gauges in order to detect their monopole and center vortex content. While a single i nstanton does not give rise to a center vortex, we iind center vortices for merons. Furthermore we provide evidence, that merons can be interpreted as intersection points of center vortices. For the instanton-antiinstanton pa ir, we find a center vortex enclosing their centers, which carries two mono pole loops. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.