Internal Symmetries of Non-Abelian Gauge Field Configurations

摘要

Which gauge transformations are symmetries (in the sense of Schwarz, and Forgacs and Manton) of a given gauge field configuration. First, in topologically non-trivial gauge theories there may be an obstruction for implementing gauge transformations on the fields; next, even those which can be implemented may fail to be symmetries. For a test particle in such a background field, those gauge transformations which are symmetries generate ordinarily conserved Noether currents - one of which is the usual electric current. This sheds a new light on the problem of ''global color'' in monopole theory and explains why no conserved electric charge can be defined in general in the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm experiment proposed by Wu and Yang. (ERA citation 10:052803)