Gauge Theories Past And Future

This is a commemoration volume to honor Professor M Veltman on the ocassion of his 60th birthday. It contains articles on Gauge field theories, a subject to which Prof. Veltman has made many important and seminal contributions. Some of the contributions are based on invited talks given at the Conference held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 16 – 18 1991. The articles in the book cover a wide range of topics from formal and phenomenological to the experimental aspects of Gauge theories. Contents:Comments on the Occasion of the Symposium Celebrating the Sixtieth Birthday of Martinus Veltman (H Neal)The Largest Time Equation and Long Distance Behavior in Gauge Field Theories (R Akhoury)Top Quark Condensate Models (W A Bardeen)Fast and Reliable Random Numbers for Extensive Monte Carlo Calculations (A Compagner)Large Higgs Mass, Triviality and Asymptotic Freedom (M Consoli)Strong CP Violation and Effective Chiral Lagrangians (E de Rafael)Is Your Weight Gauge Dependent? (B de Wit)Effective Theories and Thresholds in Particle Physics (M K Gaillard)Neutrino Mass Matrices with Minimal Polynomials of Second or Third Degree in the Three Family Model (C Jarlskog)QCD: Some Like It Hot or Why There Have Been Small Bangs (C Korthal-Altes)The Last Ten Years of Radiative Corrections (G Passarino)The Analytic Value of the Atomic Three Electron Correlation Integral with Slater Wave Functions (E Remiddi)Example of Quantum Field Theory Based on Nonlinear Lie Algebra (P van Nieuwenhuizen, K Schoutens & A Sevrin)Tini and the Cosmological Constant (L Susskind)The Veltman Vertex (R Thun)Third Threshold in Weak Interactions? (H Veltman & J J van der Bij)Relation Between the Practical Results of Current Algebra Techniques and the Originating Quark Model (M Veltman)Landau Poles, Violations of Unitarity and a Bound on the Top Quark Mass (F J Yndurain)and other papers Readership: High energy physicists. keywords:

This book presents a multidisciplinary guide to gauge theory and gravity, with chapters by the world’s leading theoretical physicists, mathematicians, historians and philosophers of science. The contributions from theoretical physics explore e.g. the consistency of the unification of gravitation and quantum theory, the underpinnings of experimental tests of gauge theory and its role in shedding light on the relationship between mathematics and physics. In turn, historians and philosophers of science assess the impact of Weyl’s view on the philosophy of science. Graduate students, lecturers and researchers in the fields of history of science, theoretical physics and philosophy of science will benefit from this book by learning about the role played by Weyl’s Raum-Zeit-Materie in shaping several modern research fields, and by gaining insights into the future prospects of gauge theory in both theoretical and experimental physics. Furthermore, the book facilitates interdisciplinary exchange and conceptual innovation in tackling fundamental questions about our deepest theories of physics. Chapter “Weyl’s Raum-Zeit-Materie and the Philosophy of Science” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

Almost all theories of fundamental interactions are nowadays based on the gauge concept. Starting with the historical example of quantum electrodynamics, we have been led to the successful unified gauge theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions, and finally to a non abelian gauge theory of strong interactions with the notion of permanently confined quarks. The. early theoretical work on gauge theories was devoted to proofs of renormalizability, investigation of short distance behaviour, the discovery of asymptotic freedom, etc . . , aspects which were accessible to tools extrapolated from renormalised perturbation theory. The second phase of the subject is concerned with the problem of quark confinement which necessitates a non-perturbative understanding of gauge theories. This phase has so far been marked by the introduc tion of ideas from geometry, topology and statistical mechanics in particular the theory of phase transitions. The 1979 Cargese Institute on "Recent Developments on Gauge Theories" was devoted to a thorough discussion of these non-perturbative, global aspects of non-abelian gauge theories. In the lectures and seminars reproduced in this volume the reader wilf find detailed reports on most of the important developments of recent times on non perturbative gauge fields by some of the leading experts and innovators in this field. Aside from lectures on gauge fields proper, there were lectures on gauge field concepts in condensed matter physics and lectures by mathematicians on global aspects of the calculus of variations, its relation to geometry and topology, and related topics.

This is a commemoration volume to honor Professor M Veltman on the ocassion of his 60th birthday. It contains articles on Gauge field theories, a subject to which Prof. Veltman has made many important and seminal contributions. Some of the contributions are based on invited talks given at the Conference held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 16 - 18 1991. The articles in the book cover a wide range of topics from formal and phenomenological to the experimental aspects of Gauge theories.

The contributions to this volume of the famous summer school in Les Houches cover the recent developments in supersymmetric string theory, the gauge theory/string theory correspondence and string duality. The book is a comprehensive introduction to the recent developments in string/M-theory and quantum gravity.

This book provides an introduction to Quantum Field Theory (QFT) at an elementary level—with only special relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics as prerequisites. For this fresh approach to teaching QFT, based on numerous lectures and courses given by the authors, a representative sample of topics has been selected containing some of the more innovative, challenging or subtle concepts. They are presented with a minimum of technical details, the discussion of the main ideas being more important than the presentation of the typically very technical mathematical details necessary to obtain the final results. Special attention is given to the realization of symmetries in particle physics: global and local symmetries, explicit, spontaneously broken, and anomalous continuous symmetries, as well as discrete symmetries. Beyond providing an overview of the standard model of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions and the current understanding of the origin of mass, the text enumerates the general features of renormalization theory as well as providing a cursory description of effective field theories and the problem of naturalness in physics. Among the more advanced topics the reader will find are an outline of the first principles derivation of the CPT theorem and the spin-statistics connection. As indicated by the title, the main aim of this text is to motivate the reader to study QFT by providing a self-contained and approachable introduction to the most exciting and challenging aspects of this successful theoretical framework.

By the end of the 1970s, it was clear that all the known forces of nature (including, in a sense, gravity) were examples of gauge theories, characterized by invariance under symmetry transformations chosen independently at each position and each time. These ideas culminated with the finding of the W and Z gauge bosons (and perhaps also the Higgs boson). This important book brings together the key papers in the history of gauge theories, including the discoveries of: the role of gauge transformations in the quantum theory of electrically charged particles in the 1920s; nonabelian gauge groups in the 1950s; vacuum symmetry-breaking in the 1960s; asymptotic freedom in the 1970s. A short introduction explains the significance of the papers, and the connections between them. Contents: Gauge Invariance in Electromagnetism; Non-Abelian Gauge Theories; Gravity as a Gauge Theory; Gauge Invariance and Superconductivity; Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Particle Physics; Gauge-Fixing in Non-Abelian Gauge Theories; Gauge Identities and Unitarity; Asymptotic Freedom; Monopoles and Vortex Lines; Non-Pertubative Approaches; Instantons and Vacuum Structure; Three-Dimensional Gauge Fields and Topological Actions; Gauge Theories and Mathematics. Readership: Graduate students, researchers and lecturers in mathematical, theoretical, quantum and high energy physics, as well as historians of science.

This book evolved out of some one hundred lectures given by twenty experts at a special instructional conference sponsored by the University Grants Commis sion, India. It is pedagogical in style and self-contained in several interrelated areas of physics which have become extremely important in present-day theoretical research. The articles begin with an introduction to general relativity and cosmology as well as particle physics and quantum field theory. This is followed by reviews of the standard gauge models of high-energy physics, renormalization group and grand unified theories. The concluding parts of the book comprise discussions in current research topics such as problems of the early universe, quantum cosmology and the new directions towards a unification of gravitation with other forces. In addition, special concise treatments of mathematical topics of direct relevance are also included. The content of the book was carefully worked out for the mutual education of students and research workers in general relativity and particle physics. This ambitious programe consequently necessitated the involvement of a number of different authors. However, care has been taken to ensure that the material meshes into a unified, cogent and readable book. We hope that the book will serve to initiate and guide a student in these different areas of investigation starting from first principles and leading to the exciting current research problems of an interdisciplinary nature in the context of the origin and structure of the universe.