Instability of Abelian field configurations in Yang-Mills theory

It is shown that static purely electric or purely magnetic Abelian field configurations in Yang-Mills theory are unstable when the electric or magnetic field strength is too large over too wide a region. The critical parameter is gEL² (gBL²), where $E (B)$ is a measure of the field strength and L is a measure of the distance over which such field strengths extend.