Related papers: Demystifying Gauge Symmetry
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…
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…
Gauge symmetries play a central role, both in the mathematical foundations as well as the conceptual construction of modern (particle) physics theories. However, it is yet unclear whether they form a necessary component of theories, or…
The concepts of symmetry, symmetry breaking and gauge symmetries are discussed, their operational meaning being displayed by the observables {\em and} the (physical) states. For infinitely extended systems the states fall into physically…
Gauge symmetries emerge from a redundant description of the effective action for light degrees of freedom after the decoupling of heavy modes. This redundant description avoids the use of explicit constraints in configuration space. For…
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…
Gauge symmetries indicate redundancies in the description of the relevant degrees of freedom of a given field theory and restrict the nature of observable quantities. One of the problems faced by emergent theories of relativistic fields is…
The paper investigates the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetries in gauge theories from a philosophical angle, taking into account the fact that the notion of a spontaneously broken local gauge symmetry, though widely employed in…
Symmetry, in particular gauge symmetry, is a fundamental principle in theoretical physics. It is intimately connected to the geometry of fibre bundles. A refinement to the gauge principle, known as ``spontaneous symmetry breaking'', leads…
We propose a new point of view to gauge theories based on taking the action of symmetry transformations directly on the coordinates of space. Via this approach the gauge fields are not introduced at the first step, and they can be…
I discuss gauge and global symmetries in particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity. In a modern understanding, global symmetries are approximate and gauge symmetries may be emergent. (Based on a lecture at the April,…
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…
The concept of (global) gauge symmetry breaking plays an important role in many areas of physics. Since the corresponding symmetry is a gauge symmetry, its breaking is actually gauge-dependent. Thus, it is possible to design gauges which…
Gauging a symmetry can be thought of as the insertion of a spacetime-filling defect. Accordingly, we regard each gaugeable symmetry in a theory as defining a $-1$-form symmetry via condensation. The resulting operators, called gauge…
"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…
Gauge theory is a well-established concept in quantum physics, electrodynamics, and cosmology. This theory has recently proliferated into new areas, such as mechanics and astrodynamics. In this paper, we discuss a few applications of gauge…
It is shown that the correct mathematical implementation of symmetry in the geometric formulation of classical field theory leads naturally beyond the concept of Lie groups and their actions on manifolds, out into the realm of Lie group…
Plastic deformation is widely regarded as an intrinsically dissipative phenomenon and its theoretical description is largely phenomenological. We argue instead that plasticity possesses a non-dissipative, symmetry determined backbone:…
In general relativity, the strong equivalence principle is underpinned by a geometrical interpretation of fields on spacetime: all fields and bodies probe the same geometry. This geometric interpretation implies that the parallel transport…
We motivate the concept of emergent gauge symmetry and discuss ways that this concept can be tested. The key idea is that if a symmetry is emergent, one should look for small violations of this symmetry because the underlying fundamental…