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Global Gauge Symmetries and Spatial Asymptotic Boundary Conditions in Yang-Mills Theory

Borsboom, Silvester and Posthuma, Hessel (2025) Global Gauge Symmetries and Spatial Asymptotic Boundary Conditions in Yang-Mills Theory. [Preprint]

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Abstract

In Yang-Mills theory on a Euclidean Cauchy surface, the physical gauge group is often taken to be $\mathcal{G}^I/\mathcal{G}^\infty_0$, where $\mathcal{G}^I$ consists of boundary-preserving gauge transformations asymptoting to a constant, and $\mathcal{G}^\infty_0$ consists of transformations generated by the Gauss law constraint. We rigorously derive this physical gauge group for both Abelian and non-Abelian theories. A key result is that restricting to $\mathcal{G}^I$ follows from the structure of the instantaneous state space on which the instantaneous Lagrangian is defined. We extend our analysis to Yang-Mills-Higgs theory, showing that boundary conditions and the physical gauge group differ between the unbroken and broken phases.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Borsboom, Silvestersilvester.borsboom@ru.nl0009-0006-0602-9789
Posthuma, Hessel0000-0001-5164-7355
Keywords: gauge symmetry, Yang-Mills theory, Higgs mechanism, boundary conditions, asymptotic symmetry group, spatial infinity
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics
Specific Sciences > Physics > Fields and Particles
Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances
Depositing User: Mr. Silvester Borsboom
Date Deposited: 17 Apr 2026 13:18
Last Modified: 17 Apr 2026 13:18
Item ID: 29188
Official URL: https://scipost.org/submissions/scipost_202506_000...
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics
Specific Sciences > Physics > Fields and Particles
Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances
Date: 25 February 2025
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/29188

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