Gomes, Henrique and Riello, Aldo (2020) Large gauge transformations, gauge invariance, and the QCD theta-term. [Preprint]
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Abstract
The eliminative view of gauge degrees of freedom---the view that they arise solely from descriptive redundancy and are therefore eliminable from the theory---is a lively topic of debate in the philosophy of physics.
Recent work attempts to leverage properties of the QCD theta-term to provide a novel argument against the eliminative view. The argument is based on the claim that the QCD theta-term changes under ``large'' gauge transformations.
Here we review geometrical propositions about fiber bundles that unequivocally falsify these claims: the theta-term encodes topological features of the fiber bundle used to represent gauge degrees of freedom, but it is fully gauge-invariant.
Nonetheless, within the essentially classical viewpoint pursued here, the physical role of the theta-term shows the physical importance of bundle topology (or superpositions thereof) and thus weighs against (a naive) eliminativism.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
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| Keywords: | Eliminativism, gauge theory, large gauge transformations, holonomies, QCD, instantons. | |||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Fields and Particles Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances |
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| Depositing User: | Dr Henrique Gomes | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2020 03:02 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 08 Jul 2020 03:02 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 17446 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Fields and Particles Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances |
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| Date: | 6 July 2020 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/17446 |
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