# Tag Info

## New answers tagged gauge-invariance

2

This is just very sloppy language on the paper's part. As you say, gauge bosons are very real and their existence has physically measurable consequences (otherwise, why would we ever waste time talking about them?). (By the way "photons and electrons" are not good examples of non-gauge particles, because photons are also gauge bosons :) .) The paper just ...

2

The first answer to such a question must always be: A gauge symmetry has no "physical" meaning, it is an artifact of our choice for the coordinates/fields with which we describe the system (cf. Gauge symmetry is not a symmetry?, What is the importance of vector potential not being unique?, "Quantization of gauge systems" by Henneaux and Teitelboim). Any ...

2

This is a very broad question, so there are many ways to answer it. Here is one interpretation. A principal distinction between gauge symmetries and global symmetries is that gauge symmetries lead to long-range interactions between charged particles; the gauge symmetry demands the existence of a massless field which can propagate over arbitrarily long ...

0

All the quantities are scalars ($\Box=\partial^\mu\partial_\nu$, $\phi$ and $\rho$) and so $\Box\phi=4\pi\rho$ is clearly Lorentz invariant.

0

It helps to remember that invariant quantities are seen as scalars to the transformation (they have no indices in the target space). In the other hand, covariant quantities are objects that transform in a certain way. Example: Vectors in $R^{2}$, under rotation $R_{ij}$, transform covariantly since $v'_{i}=R_{ij}v_{j}$, but it's length is invariant since ...

0

Under the $U(1)$ transform, $A_n \to A_n - \nabla_R \xi_n(R),$ and using Stokes theorem it immediately follows that $\gamma$ is invariant under $U(1).$

9

The fact that the theory is not gauge invariant implies that all degrees of freedom of $A_\mu$ must have physical meaning: This is not the theory of photons where only transverse degrees of freedom make sense. This way you must tackle some non-trivial issue like the negative norm associated with temporal modes. This could be avoided by adding a mass to ...

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