Nguyen, James and Teh, Nicholas J. and Wells, Laura (2017) Why surplus structure is not superfluous. [Preprint]
|
Text
Nguyen, Teh, and Wells - BJPS PP.pdf Download (440kB) | Preview |
Abstract
The idea that gauge theory has ‘surplus’ structure poses a puzzle: in one much discussed sense, this structure is redundant; but on the other hand, it is also widely held to play an essential role in the theory. In this paper, we employ category-theoretic tools to illuminate an aspect of this puzzle. We precisify what is meant by ‘surplus’ structure by means of functorial comparisons with equivalence classes of gauge fields, and then show that such structure is essential for any theory that represents a rich collection of physically relevant fields which are ‘local’ in nature.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
||||||||||||
| Additional Information: | Accepted for publication in British Journal for Philosophy of Science | ||||||||||||
| Keywords: | gauge, representation, locality, surplus structure, theories, electromagnetism | ||||||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Fields and Particles General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Structure of Theories Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances |
||||||||||||
| Depositing User: | James Nguyen | ||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 04 Dec 2017 18:58 | ||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2017 18:58 | ||||||||||||
| Item ID: | 14166 | ||||||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Fields and Particles General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Structure of Theories Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances |
||||||||||||
| Date: | 4 December 2017 | ||||||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/14166 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}