instanton
noun
instanton is a noun meaning “A solution to the imaginary time nonlinear field equation of Yang-Mills theory; carries information about quantum tunnelling” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled I-N-S-T-A-N-T-O-N, and it appears about once in every 49 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of instanton is instantons.
What does instanton mean?
noun
- 1
A solution to the imaginary time nonlinear field equation of Yang-Mills theory; carries information about quantum tunnelling.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of instanton
- instantons plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is instanton?
Instanton appears about once in every 49 million words in written English, the 217,360th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Instanton in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense A solution to the Yang-Mills theory equation:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | instantón |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does instanton come from?
From instant + -on.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).