Related papers: Why Gauge?
This thesis is about conceptual aspects of gauge theories. Gauge theories lie at the heart of modern physics: in particular, they constitute the standard model of particle physics. At its simplest, the idea of gauge is that nature is best…
Physical systems may couple to other systems through variables that are not gauge invariant. When we split a gauge system into two subsystems, the gauge-invariant variables of the two subsystems have less information than the gauge…
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that…
Positing complex adaptive systems made of agents with relations between them that can be composed, it follows that they can be described by gauge theories similar to elementary particle theory and general relativity. By definition, a…
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for…
I consider two usages of the expression "gauge theory". On one, a gauge theory is a theory with excess structure; on the other, a gauge theory is any theory appropriately related to classical electromagnetism. I make precise one sense in…
Although gauge invariance preserves the values of physical observables, a gauge transformation can introduce important alterations of physical interpretations. To understand this, it is first shown that a gauge transformation is not, in…
The question of what should be meant by a measurement is tackled from a mathematical perspective whose physical interpretation is that a measurement is a fundamental process via which a finite amount of classical information is produced.…
This note focuses the problem of motivating the use of gauge symmetries (being the identity on the observables) from general principles, beyond their practical success, starting from global gauge symmetries and then by emphasizing the…
Measurement theory is the cornerstone of science, but no equivalent theory underpins the huge volumes of non-numerical data now being generated. In this study, we show that replacing numbers with alternative mathematical models, such as…
"Physical theories of fundamental significance tend to be gauge theories. These are theories in which the physical system being dealt with is described by more variables than there are physically independent degree of freedom. The…
Phenomena in gauge theory are often described in the physics literature via a specific choice of gauge. In foundational and philosophical discussions this is often criticized as introducing gauge dependence, and contrasted against (often…
Evidence for fine-tuning of physical parameters suitable for life can perhaps be explained by almost any combination of providence, coincidence or multiverse. A multiverse usually includes parts unobservable to us, but if the theory for it…
Gauge symmetries are often highlighted as a fundamental cornerstone of modern physics. But at the same time, it is commonly emphasized that gauge symmetries are not a fundamental feature of nature but merely redundancies in our description.…
I sketch what it is supposed to mean to quantize gauge theory, and how this can be made more concrete in perturbation theory and also by starting with a finite-dimensional lattice approximation. Based on real experiments and computer…
The gauge symmetry is one of the most important concepts in modern physics, but there are two conflicting views on its meaning or interpretation. The standard view is that local gauge symmetry is the basis of the pursue of fundamental…
The theory of measurement is employed to elucidate the physical basis of general relativity. For measurements involving phenomena with intrinsic length or time scales, such scales must in general be negligible compared to the (translational…
A pedagogical but concise overview of fiber bundles and their connections is provided, in the context of gauge theories in physics. The emphasis is on defining and visualizing concepts and relationships between them, as well as listing…
Why is gauge symmetry so important in modern physics, given that one must eliminate it when interpreting what the theory represents? In this paper we discuss the sense in which gauge symmetry can be fruitfully applied to constrain the space…
Following recent assumptions to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, the structure of spacetime is suppose to be a consequence of the relations among some fundamental objects, and its concept can be formulated without the…