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In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian is invariant under a continuous group of local transformations. The term ''gauge'' refers to redundant degrees of freedom in the Lagrangian. The transformations between possible gauges, called ''gauge transformations'', form a Lie group—referred to as the ''symmetry group'' or the ''gauge group'' of the theory. Associated with any Lie group is the Lie algebra of group generators. For each group generator there necessarily arises a corresponding vector field called the ''gauge field''. Gauge fields are included in the Lagrangian to ensure its invariance under the local group transformations (called ''gauge invariance''). When such a theory is quantized, the quanta of the gauge fields are called ''gauge bosons''. If the symmetry group is non-commutative, the gauge theory is referred to as ''non-abelian'', the usual example being the Yang–Mills theory. Many powerful theories in physics are described by Lagrangians that are invariant under some symmetry transformation groups. When they are invariant under a transformation identically performed at ''every'' point in the space in which the physical processes occur, they are said to have a global symmetry. The requirement of local symmetry, the cornerstone of gauge theories, is a stricter constraint. In fact, a global symmetry is just a local symmetry whose group's parameters are fixed in space-time. Gauge theories are important as the successful field theories explaining the dynamics of elementary particles. Quantum electrodynamics is an abelian gauge theory with the symmetry group U(1) and has one gauge field, the electromagnetic four-potential, with the photon being the gauge boson. The Standard Model is a non-abelian gauge theory with the symmetry group U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3) and has a total of twelve gauge bosons: the photon, three weak bosons and eight gluons. Gauge theories are also important in explaining gravitation in the theory of general relativity. Its case is somewhat unique in that the gauge field is a tensor, the Lanczos tensor. Theories of quantum gravity, beginning with gauge gravitation theory, also postulate the existence of a gauge boson known as the graviton. Gauge symmetries can be viewed as analogues of the principle of general covariance of general relativity in which the coordinate system can be chosen freely under arbitrary diffeomorphisms of spacetime. Both gauge invariance and diffeomorphism invariance reflect a redundancy in the description of the system. An alternative theory of gravitation, gauge theory gravity, replaces the principle of general covariance with a true gauge principle with new gauge fields. Historically, these ideas were first stated in the context of classical electromagnetism and later in general relativity. However, the modern importance of gauge symmetries appeared first in the relativistic quantum mechanics of electronsquantum electrodynamics, elaborated on below. Today, gauge theories are useful in condensed matter, nuclear and high energy physics among other subfields. ==History and importance== The earliest field theory having a gauge symmetry was Maxwell's formulation of electrodynamics in 1864. The importance of this symmetry remained unnoticed in the earliest formulations. Similarly unnoticed, Hilbert had derived the Einstein field equations by postulating the invariance of the action under a general coordinate transformation. Later Hermann Weyl, in an attempt to unify general relativity and electromagnetism, conjectured that ''Eichinvarianz'' or invariance under the change of scale (or "gauge") might also be a local symmetry of general relativity. After the development of quantum mechanics, Weyl, Vladimir Fock and Fritz London modified gauge by replacing the scale factor with a complex quantity and turned the scale transformation into a change of phase, which is a U(1) gauge symmetry. This explained the electromagnetic field effect on the wave function of a charged quantum mechanical particle. This was the first widely recognised gauge theory, popularised by Pauli in the 1940s.〔Wolfgang Pauli (1941) "(Relativistic Field Theories of Elementary Particles, )" ''Rev. Mod. Phys.'' 13: 203–32.〕 In 1954, attempting to resolve some of the great confusion in elementary particle physics, Chen Ning Yang and Robert Mills introduced non-abelian gauge theories as models to understand the strong interaction holding together nucleons in atomic nuclei. (Ronald Shaw, working under Abdus Salam, independently introduced the same notion in his doctoral thesis.) Generalizing the gauge invariance of electromagnetism, they attempted to construct a theory based on the action of the (non-abelian) SU(2) symmetry group on the isospin doublet of protons and neutrons. This is similar to the action of the U(1) group on the spinor fields of quantum electrodynamics. In particle physics the emphasis was on using quantized gauge theories. This idea later found application in the quantum field theory of the weak force, and its unification with electromagnetism in the electroweak theory. Gauge theories became even more attractive when it was realized that non-abelian gauge theories reproduced a feature called asymptotic freedom. Asymptotic freedom was believed to be an important characteristic of strong interactions. This motivated searching for a strong force gauge theory. This theory, now known as quantum chromodynamics, is a gauge theory with the action of the SU(3) group on the color triplet of quarks. The Standard Model unifies the description of electromagnetism, weak interactions and strong interactions in the language of gauge theory. In the 1970s, Sir Michael Atiyah began studying the mathematics of solutions to the classical Yang–Mills equations. In 1983, Atiyah's student Simon Donaldson built on this work to show that the differentiable classification of smooth 4-manifolds is very different from their classification up to homeomorphism. Michael Freedman used Donaldson's work to exhibit exotic R4s, that is, exotic differentiable structures on Euclidean 4-dimensional space. This led to an increasing interest in gauge theory for its own sake, independent of its successes in fundamental physics. In 1994, Edward Witten and Nathan Seiberg invented gauge-theoretic techniques based on supersymmetry that enabled the calculation of certain topological invariants (the Seiberg–Witten invariants). These contributions to mathematics from gauge theory have led to a renewed interest in this area. The importance of gauge theories in physics is exemplified in the tremendous success of the mathematical formalism in providing a unified framework to describe the quantum field theories of electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force. This theory, known as the Standard Model, accurately describes experimental predictions regarding three of the four fundamental forces of nature, and is a gauge theory with the gauge group SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). Modern theories like string theory, as well as general relativity, are, in one way or another, gauge theories. :''See Pickering〔 〕 for more about the history of gauge and quantum field theories.'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「gauge theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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