Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh

The Dawning of Gauge Theory (eBook, PDF)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

During the course of this century, gauge invariance has slowly emerged from being an incidental symmetry of electromagnetism to being a fundamental geometrical principle underlying the four known fundamental physical interactions. The development has been in two stages. In the first stage (1916-1956) the geometrical significance of gauge-invariance gradually came to be appreciated and the original abelian gauge-invariance of electromagnetism was generalized to non-abelian gauge invariance. In the second stage (1960-1975) it was found that, contrary to first appearances, the non-abelian gauge-theories provided exactly the framework that was needed to describe the nuclear interactions (both weak and strong) and thus provided a universal framework for describing all known fundamental interactions. In this work, Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh describes the former phase.

O'Raifeartaigh first illustrates how gravitational theory and quantum mechanics played crucial roles in the reassessment of gauge theory as a geometric principle and as a framework for describing both electromagnetism and gravitation. He then describes how the abelian electromagnetic gauge-theory was generalized to its present non-abelian form. The development is illustrated by including a selection of relevant articles, many of them appearing here for the first time in English, notably by Weyl, Schrodinger, Klein, and London in the pre-war years, and by Pauli, Shaw, Yang-Mills, and Utiyama after the war. The articles illustrate that the reassessment of gauge-theory, due in a large measure to Weyl, constituted a major philosophical as well as technical advance.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Verso
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Juni 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780691215112
• Artikelnr.: 59366881

Autorenporträt

Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh is Senior Professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, where he teaches courses in Quantum Field Theory and Particle Physics. He is the author of Group-Structure of Gauge Theory.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
3
1
Gauge Transformations in Classical Electromagnetism
13
Gravitation and Electricity
24
2
Aftermath of Einstein's Gravitational Theory
38
3
Generalizations of Einstein's Theory
44
On the Unification Problem of Physics
53
Quantum Theory and Five-Dimensional Relativity
59
On the Invariant Form of the Wave and Motion Equations for a Charged
Point-Mass
70
4
The Renaissance of Weyl's Idea: EM Gauge Theory
77
On a Remarkable Property of the Quantum-Orbits of a Single Electron
87
Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem
91
Quantum-Mechanical Interpretation of Weyl's Theory
94
5
Weyl's Classic, 1929
107
Electron and Gravitation
121
6
Klein's Serendipity, 1938
147
On the Theory of Charged Fields
152
7
Pauli's Dimensional Reduction, 1953
166
Meson-Nucleon Interaction and Differential Geometry
171
8
The Yang-Mills Theory, 1953-54
182
Isotopic Spin Conservation and a Generalized Gauge Invariance
185
Conservation of Isotopic Spin and Isotopic Gauge Invariance
186
9
Shaw's SO(2) Approach, 1954-55
197
Invariance under General Isotopic Spin Transformations
200
10
Utiyama's General Approach, 1954-55
208
Invariant Theoretical Interpretation of Interaction
213
Conclusion
240
References
243
Index
247

Rezensionen

The book thus performs a double service: it offers a rewarding description of the development of the gauge symmetry idea that is complete even without the original papers, and it makes those original papers readily accessible to physicists and mathematicians. . . . This book represents an important contribution to the history of fundamental ideas in physics.