Gauge Theory and the Geometrization of Physics
Gauge Theory and the Geometrisation of Physics
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This Element is broadly about the geometrization of physics, but mostly it is about 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 described using a descriptively redundant language; the different descriptions are said to be related by a gauge symmetry. The over-arching question this Element aims to answer is: why is descriptive redundancy fruitful for physics? I will provide three inter-related answers to the question: ``Why gauge theory?'', that is: why introduce redundancies in our models of nature in the first place? The first is pragmatic, or methodological; the second is based on geometrical considerations, and the third is broadly relational.
Product details
January 2025Adobe eBook Reader
9781009033954
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Why gauge? A Noether, methodological reason
- 3. Gauge theory and the geometry of fiber bundles
- 4. Why gauge? a geometrical reason
- 5. The Aharonov-Bohm effect, non-locality, and non-separability
- References.
