Quantum Chromodynamics - The Perfect Yang-Mills Gauge Field Theory

摘要

David Gross: My talk today is about the most beautiful of all Yang -Mills Theories (non-Abelian gauge theories), the theory of the strong nuclear interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics, QCD. We are celebrating 60 years of the publication of a remarkable paper which introduced the concept of non-Abelian local gauge symmetries, now called the Yang-Mills theory, to physics. In the introduction to this paper it is noted that the usual principle of isotopic spin symmetry is not consistent with the concept of localized fields. This sentence has drawn attention over the years because the usual principle of isotopic spin symmetry is consistent, it is just not satisfactory. The authors, Yang and Mills, introduced a more satisfactory notion of local symmetry which did not require one to rotate (in isotopic spin space) the whole universe at once to achieve the symmetry transformation. Global symmetries are thus are similar to 'action at a distance', whereas Yang-Mills theory is manifestly local.