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Gauge fixing

In the physics of gauge theories, gauge fixing (also called choosing a gauge) denotes a mathematical procedure for coping with redundant degrees of freedom in field variables. By definition, a gauge theory represents each physically distinct configuration of the system as an equivalence class of detailed local field configurations. Any two detailed configurations in the same equivalence class are related by a certain transformation, equivalent to a shear along unphysical axes in configuration space. Most of the quantitative physical predictions of a gauge theory can only be obtained under a coherent prescription for suppressing or ignoring these unphysical degrees of freedom.

Although the unphysical axes in the space of detailed configurations are a fundamental property of the physical model, there is no special set of directions "perpendicular" to them. Hence there is an enormous amount of freedom involved in taking a "cross section" representing each physical configuration by a particular detailed configuration (or even a weighted distribution of them). Judicious gauge fixing can simplify calculations immensely, but becomes progressively harder as the physical model becomes more realistic; its application to quantum field theory is fraught with complications related to renormalization, especially when the computation is continued to higher orders. Historically, the search for logically consistent and computationally tractable gauge fixing procedures, and efforts to demonstrate their equivalence in the face of a bewildering variety of technical difficulties, has been a major driver of mathematical physics from the late nineteenth century to the present.[citation needed]

Gauge freedom edit

The archetypical gauge theory is the HeavisideGibbs formulation of continuum electrodynamics in terms of an electromagnetic four-potential, which is presented here in space/time asymmetric Heaviside notation. The electric field E and magnetic field B of Maxwell's equations contain only "physical" degrees of freedom, in the sense that every mathematical degree of freedom in an electromagnetic field configuration has a separately measurable effect on the motions of test charges in the vicinity. These "field strength" variables can be expressed in terms of the electric scalar potential   and the magnetic vector potential A through the relations:

 

If the transformation

 

(1)

is made, then B remains unchanged, since (with the identity  )

 

However, this transformation changes E according to

 

If another change

 

(2)

is made then E also remains the same. Hence, the E and B fields are unchanged if one takes any function ψ(r, t) and simultaneously transforms A and φ via the transformations (1) and (2).

A particular choice of the scalar and vector potentials is a gauge (more precisely, gauge potential) and a scalar function ψ used to change the gauge is called a gauge function.[citation needed] The existence of arbitrary numbers of gauge functions ψ(r, t) corresponds to the U(1) gauge freedom of this theory. Gauge fixing can be done in many ways, some of which we exhibit below.

Although classical electromagnetism is now often spoken of as a gauge theory, it was not originally conceived in these terms. The motion of a classical point charge is affected only by the electric and magnetic field strengths at that point, and the potentials can be treated as a mere mathematical device for simplifying some proofs and calculations. Not until the advent of quantum field theory could it be said that the potentials themselves are part of the physical configuration of a system. The earliest consequence to be accurately predicted and experimentally verified was the Aharonov–Bohm effect, which has no classical counterpart. Nevertheless, gauge freedom is still true in these theories. For example, the Aharonov–Bohm effect depends on a line integral of A around a closed loop, and this integral is not changed by

 

Gauge fixing in non-abelian gauge theories, such as Yang–Mills theory and general relativity, is a rather more complicated topic; for details see Gribov ambiguity, Faddeev–Popov ghost, and frame bundle.

An illustration edit

 
Gauge fixing of a twisted cylinder. (Note: the line is on the surface of the cylinder, not inside it.)

As an illustration of gauge fixing, one may look at a cylindrical rod and attempt to tell whether it is twisted. If the rod is perfectly cylindrical, then the circular symmetry of the cross section makes it impossible to tell whether or not it is twisted. However, if there were a straight line drawn along the length of the rod, then one could easily say whether or not there is a twist by looking at the state of the line. Drawing a line is gauge fixing. Drawing the line spoils the gauge symmetry, i.e., the circular symmetry U(1) of the cross section at each point of the rod. The line is the equivalent of a gauge function; it need not be straight. Almost any line is a valid gauge fixing, i.e., there is a large gauge freedom. In summary, to tell whether the rod is twisted, the gauge must be known. Physical quantities, such as the energy of the torsion, do not depend on the gauge, i.e., they are gauge invariant.

Coulomb gauge edit

The Coulomb gauge (also known as the transverse gauge) is used in quantum chemistry and condensed matter physics and is defined by the gauge condition (more precisely, gauge fixing condition)

 

It is particularly useful for "semi-classical" calculations in quantum mechanics, in which the vector potential is quantized but the Coulomb interaction is not.

The Coulomb gauge has a number of properties:

  1. The potentials can be expressed in terms of instantaneous values of the fields and densities (in International System of Units)[1]
     
     
    where ρ(r, t) is the electric charge density,   and   (where r is any position vector in space and r′ is a point in the charge or current distribution), the   operates on r and dr is the volume element at r.

    The instantaneous nature of these potentials appears, at first sight, to violate causality, since motions of electric charge or magnetic field appear everywhere instantaneously as changes to the potentials. This is justified by noting that the scalar and vector potentials themselves do not affect the motions of charges, only the combinations of their derivatives that form the electromagnetic field strength. Although one can compute the field strengths explicitly in the Coulomb gauge and demonstrate that changes in them propagate at the speed of light, it is much simpler to observe that the field strengths are unchanged under gauge transformations and to demonstrate causality in the manifestly Lorentz covariant Lorenz gauge described below.

    Another expression for the vector potential, in terms of the time-retarded electric current density J(r, t), has been obtained to be:[2]

     
  2. Further gauge transformations that retain the Coulomb gauge condition might be made with gauge functions that satisfy 2ψ = 0, but as the only solution to this equation that vanishes at infinity (where all fields are required to vanish) is ψ(r, t) = 0, no gauge arbitrariness remains. Because of this, the Coulomb gauge is said to be a complete gauge, in contrast to gauges where some gauge arbitrariness remains, like the Lorenz gauge below.
  3. The Coulomb gauge is a minimal gauge in the sense that the integral of A2 over all space is minimal for this gauge: All other gauges give a larger integral.[3] The minimum value given by the Coulomb gauge is
     
  4. In regions far from electric charge the scalar potential becomes zero. This is known as the radiation gauge. Electromagnetic radiation was first quantized in this gauge.
  5. The Coulomb gauge admits a natural Hamiltonian formulation of the evolution equations of the electromagnetic field interacting with a conserved current,[citation needed] which is an advantage for the quantization of the theory. The Coulomb gauge is, however, not Lorentz covariant. If a Lorentz transformation to a new inertial frame is carried out, a further gauge transformation has to be made to retain the Coulomb gauge condition. Because of this, the Coulomb gauge is not used in covariant perturbation theory, which has become standard for the treatment of relativistic quantum field theories such as quantum electrodynamics (QED). Lorentz covariant gauges such as the Lorenz gauge are usually used in these theories. Amplitudes of physical processes in QED in the noncovariant Coulomb gauge coincide with those in the covariant Lorenz gauge.[4]
  6. For a uniform and constant magnetic field B the vector potential in the Coulomb gauge can be expressed in the so-called symmetric gauge as
     
    plus the gradient of any scalar field (the gauge function), which can be confirmed by calculating the div and curl of A. The divergence of A at infinity is a consequence of the unphysical assumption that the magnetic field is uniform throughout the whole of space. Although this vector potential is unrealistic in general it can provide a good approximation to the potential in a finite volume of space in which the magnetic field is uniform. Another common choice for homogeneous constant fields is the Landau gauge (not to be confused with the Rξ Landau gauge of the next section), where   and
     
    where   are unitary vectors of the Cartesian coordinate system (z-axis aligned with the magnetic field).
  7. As a consequence of the considerations above, the electromagnetic potentials may be expressed in their most general forms in terms of the electromagnetic fields as
     
     
    where ψ(r, t) is an arbitrary scalar field called the gauge function. The fields that are the derivatives of the gauge function are known as pure gauge fields and the arbitrariness associated with the gauge function is known as gauge freedom. In a calculation that is carried out correctly the pure gauge terms have no effect on any physical observable. A quantity or expression that does not depend on the gauge function is said to be gauge invariant: All physical observables are required to be gauge invariant. A gauge transformation from the Coulomb gauge to another gauge is made by taking the gauge function to be the sum of a specific function which will give the desired gauge transformation and the arbitrary function. If the arbitrary function is then set to zero, the gauge is said to be fixed. Calculations may be carried out in a fixed gauge but must be done in a way that is gauge invariant.

Lorenz gauge edit

The Lorenz gauge is given, in SI units, by:

 
and in Gaussian units by:
 

This may be rewritten as:

 
where   is the electromagnetic four-potential, μ the 4-gradient [using the metric signature (+, −, −, −)].

It is unique among the constraint gauges in retaining manifest Lorentz invariance. Note, however, that this gauge was originally named after the Danish physicist Ludvig Lorenz and not after Hendrik Lorentz; it is often misspelled "Lorentz gauge". (Neither was the first to use it in calculations; it was introduced in 1888 by George Francis FitzGerald.)

The Lorenz gauge leads to the following inhomogeneous wave equations for the potentials:

 
 

It can be seen from these equations that, in the absence of current and charge, the solutions are potentials which propagate at the speed of light.

The Lorenz gauge is incomplete in some sense: there remains a subspace of gauge transformations which can also preserve the constraint. These remaining degrees of freedom correspond to gauge functions which satisfy the wave equation

 

These remaining gauge degrees of freedom propagate at the speed of light. To obtain a fully fixed gauge, one must add boundary conditions along the light cone of the experimental region.

Maxwell's equations in the Lorenz gauge simplify to

 
where   is the four-current.

Two solutions of these equations for the same current configuration differ by a solution of the vacuum wave equation

 
In this form it is clear that the components of the potential separately satisfy the Klein–Gordon equation, and hence that the Lorenz gauge condition allows transversely, longitudinally, and "time-like" polarized waves in the four-potential. The transverse polarizations correspond to classical radiation, i.e., transversely polarized waves in the field strength. To suppress the "unphysical" longitudinal and time-like polarization states, which are not observed in experiments at classical distance scales, one must also employ auxiliary constraints known as Ward identities. Classically, these identities are equivalent to the continuity equation
 

Many of the differences between classical and quantum electrodynamics can be accounted for by the role that the longitudinal and time-like polarizations play in interactions between charged particles at microscopic distances.

Rξ gauges edit

The Rξ gauges are a generalization of the Lorenz gauge applicable to theories expressed in terms of an action principle with Lagrangian density  . Instead of fixing the gauge by constraining the gauge field a priori, via an auxiliary equation, one adds a gauge breaking term to the "physical" (gauge invariant) Lagrangian

 

The choice of the parameter ξ determines the choice of gauge. The Rξ Landau gauge is classically equivalent to Lorenz gauge: it is obtained in the limit ξ → 0 but postpones taking that limit until after the theory has been quantized. It improves the rigor of certain existence and equivalence proofs. Most quantum field theory computations are simplest in the Feynman–'t Hooft gauge, in which ξ = 1; a few are more tractable in other Rξ gauges, such as the Yennie gauge ξ = 3.

An equivalent formulation of Rξ gauge uses an auxiliary field, a scalar field B with no independent dynamics:

 

The auxiliary field, sometimes called a Nakanishi–Lautrup field, can be eliminated by "completing the square" to obtain the previous form. From a mathematical perspective the auxiliary field is a variety of Goldstone boson, and its use has advantages when identifying the asymptotic states of the theory, and especially when generalizing beyond QED.

Historically, the use of Rξ gauges was a significant technical advance in extending quantum electrodynamics computations beyond one-loop order. In addition to retaining manifest Lorentz invariance, the Rξ prescription breaks the symmetry under local gauge transformations while preserving the ratio of functional measures of any two physically distinct gauge configurations. This permits a change of variables in which infinitesimal perturbations along "physical" directions in configuration space are entirely uncoupled from those along "unphysical" directions, allowing the latter to be absorbed into the physically meaningless normalization of the functional integral. When ξ is finite, each physical configuration (orbit of the group of gauge transformations) is represented not by a single solution of a constraint equation but by a Gaussian distribution centered on the extremum of the gauge breaking term. In terms of the Feynman rules of the gauge-fixed theory, this appears as a contribution to the photon propagator for internal lines from virtual photons of unphysical polarization.

The photon propagator, which is the multiplicative factor corresponding to an internal photon in the Feynman diagram expansion of a QED calculation, contains a factor gμν corresponding to the Minkowski metric. An expansion of this factor as a sum over photon polarizations involves terms containing all four possible polarizations. Transversely polarized radiation can be expressed mathematically as a sum over either a linearly or circularly polarized basis. Similarly, one can combine the longitudinal and time-like gauge polarizations to obtain "forward" and "backward" polarizations; these are a form of light-cone coordinates in which the metric is off-diagonal. An expansion of the gμν factor in terms of circularly polarized (spin ±1) and light-cone coordinates is called a spin sum. Spin sums can be very helpful both in simplifying expressions and in obtaining a physical understanding of the experimental effects associated with different terms in a theoretical calculation.

Richard Feynman used arguments along approximately these lines largely to justify calculation procedures that produced consistent, finite, high precision results for important observable parameters such as the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. Although his arguments sometimes lacked mathematical rigor even by physicists' standards and glossed over details such as the derivation of Ward–Takahashi identities of the quantum theory, his calculations worked, and Freeman Dyson soon demonstrated that his method was substantially equivalent to those of Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, with whom Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Forward and backward polarized radiation can be omitted in the asymptotic states of a quantum field theory (see Ward–Takahashi identity). For this reason, and because their appearance in spin sums can be seen as a mere mathematical device in QED (much like the electromagnetic four-potential in classical electrodynamics), they are often spoken of as "unphysical". But unlike the constraint-based gauge fixing procedures above, the Rξ gauge generalizes well to non-abelian gauge groups such as the SU(3) of QCD. The couplings between physical and unphysical perturbation axes do not entirely disappear under the corresponding change of variables; to obtain correct results, one must account for the non-trivial Jacobian of the embedding of gauge freedom axes within the space of detailed configurations. This leads to the explicit appearance of forward and backward polarized gauge bosons in Feynman diagrams, along with Faddeev–Popov ghosts, which are even more "unphysical" in that they violate the spin–statistics theorem. The relationship between these entities, and the reasons why they do not appear as particles in the quantum mechanical sense, becomes more evident in the BRST formalism of quantization.

Maximal abelian gauge edit

In any non-abelian gauge theory, any maximal abelian gauge is an incomplete gauge which fixes the gauge freedom outside of the maximal abelian subgroup. Examples are

  • For SU(2) gauge theory in D dimensions, the maximal abelian subgroup is a U(1) subgroup. If this is chosen to be the one generated by the Pauli matrix σ3, then the maximal abelian gauge is that which maximizes the function
     
    where
     
  • For SU(3) gauge theory in D dimensions, the maximal abelian subgroup is a U(1)×U(1) subgroup. If this is chosen to be the one generated by the Gell-Mann matrices λ3 and λ8, then the maximal abelian gauge is that which maximizes the function
     
    where
     

This applies regularly in higher algebras (of groups in the algebras), for example the Clifford Algebra and as it is regularly.

Less commonly used gauges edit

Various other gauges, which can be beneficial in specific situations have appeared in the literature.[2]

Weyl gauge edit

The Weyl gauge (also known as the Hamiltonian or temporal gauge) is an incomplete gauge obtained by the choice

 

It is named after Hermann Weyl. It eliminates the negative-norm ghost, lacks manifest Lorentz invariance, and requires longitudinal photons and a constraint on states.[5]

Multipolar gauge edit

The gauge condition of the multipolar gauge (also known as the line gauge, point gauge or Poincaré gauge (named after Henri Poincaré)) is:

 

This is another gauge in which the potentials can be expressed in a simple way in terms of the instantaneous fields

 
 

Fock–Schwinger gauge edit

The gauge condition of the Fock–Schwinger gauge (named after Vladimir Fock and Julian Schwinger; sometimes also called the relativistic Poincaré gauge) is:

 
where xμ is the position four-vector.

Dirac gauge edit

The nonlinear Dirac gauge condition (named after Paul Dirac) is:

 

References edit

  1. ^ Stewart, A. M. (2003). "Vector potential of the Coulomb gauge". European Journal of Physics. 24 (5): 519–524. Bibcode:2003EJPh...24..519S. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/24/5/308. S2CID 250880504.
  2. ^ a b Jackson, J. D. (2002). "From Lorenz to Coulomb and other explicit gauge transformations". American Journal of Physics. 70 (9): 917–928. arXiv:physics/0204034. Bibcode:2002AmJPh..70..917J. doi:10.1119/1.1491265. S2CID 119652556.
  3. ^ Gubarev, F. V.; Stodolsky, L.; Zakharov, V. I. (2001). "On the Significance of the Vector Potential Squared". Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 (11): 2220–2222. arXiv:hep-ph/0010057. Bibcode:2001PhRvL..86.2220G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.2220. PMID 11289894. S2CID 45172403.
  4. ^ Adkins, Gregory S. (1987-09-15). "Feynman rules of Coulomb-gauge QED and the electron magnetic moment". Physical Review D. 36 (6). American Physical Society (APS): 1929–1932. Bibcode:1987PhRvD..36.1929A. doi:10.1103/physrevd.36.1929. ISSN 0556-2821. PMID 9958379.
  5. ^ Hatfield, Brian (1992). Quantum field theory of point particles and strings. Addison-Wesley. pp. 210–213. ISBN 0201360799.

Further reading edit

gauge, fixing, physics, gauge, theories, gauge, fixing, also, called, choosing, gauge, denotes, mathematical, procedure, coping, with, redundant, degrees, freedom, field, variables, definition, gauge, theory, represents, each, physically, distinct, configurati. In the physics of gauge theories gauge fixing also called choosing a gauge denotes a mathematical procedure for coping with redundant degrees of freedom in field variables By definition a gauge theory represents each physically distinct configuration of the system as an equivalence class of detailed local field configurations Any two detailed configurations in the same equivalence class are related by a certain transformation equivalent to a shear along unphysical axes in configuration space Most of the quantitative physical predictions of a gauge theory can only be obtained under a coherent prescription for suppressing or ignoring these unphysical degrees of freedom Although the unphysical axes in the space of detailed configurations are a fundamental property of the physical model there is no special set of directions perpendicular to them Hence there is an enormous amount of freedom involved in taking a cross section representing each physical configuration by a particular detailed configuration or even a weighted distribution of them Judicious gauge fixing can simplify calculations immensely but becomes progressively harder as the physical model becomes more realistic its application to quantum field theory is fraught with complications related to renormalization especially when the computation is continued to higher orders Historically the search for logically consistent and computationally tractable gauge fixing procedures and efforts to demonstrate their equivalence in the face of a bewildering variety of technical difficulties has been a major driver of mathematical physics from the late nineteenth century to the present citation needed Contents 1 Gauge freedom 1 1 An illustration 2 Coulomb gauge 3 Lorenz gauge 4 R3 gauges 5 Maximal abelian gauge 6 Less commonly used gauges 6 1 Weyl gauge 6 2 Multipolar gauge 6 3 Fock Schwinger gauge 6 4 Dirac gauge 7 References 8 Further readingGauge freedom editThe archetypical gauge theory is the Heaviside Gibbs formulation of continuum electrodynamics in terms of an electromagnetic four potential which is presented here in space time asymmetric Heaviside notation The electric field E and magnetic field B of Maxwell s equations contain only physical degrees of freedom in the sense that every mathematical degree of freedom in an electromagnetic field configuration has a separately measurable effect on the motions of test charges in the vicinity These field strength variables can be expressed in terms of the electric scalar potential f displaystyle varphi nbsp and the magnetic vector potential A through the relations E f A t B A displaystyle mathbf E nabla varphi frac partial mathbf A partial t quad mathbf B nabla times mathbf A nbsp If the transformation A A ps displaystyle mathbf A rightarrow mathbf A nabla psi nbsp 1 is made then B remains unchanged since with the identity ps 0 displaystyle nabla times nabla psi 0 nbsp B A ps A displaystyle mathbf B nabla times mathbf A nabla psi nabla times mathbf A nbsp However this transformation changes E according toE f A t ps t f ps t A t displaystyle mathbf E nabla varphi frac partial mathbf A partial t nabla frac partial psi partial t nabla left varphi frac partial psi partial t right frac partial mathbf A partial t nbsp If another change f f ps t displaystyle varphi rightarrow varphi frac partial psi partial t nbsp 2 is made then E also remains the same Hence the E and B fields are unchanged if one takes any function ps r t and simultaneously transforms A and f via the transformations 1 and 2 A particular choice of the scalar and vector potentials is a gauge more precisely gauge potential and a scalar function ps used to change the gauge is called a gauge function citation needed The existence of arbitrary numbers of gauge functions ps r t corresponds to the U 1 gauge freedom of this theory Gauge fixing can be done in many ways some of which we exhibit below Although classical electromagnetism is now often spoken of as a gauge theory it was not originally conceived in these terms The motion of a classical point charge is affected only by the electric and magnetic field strengths at that point and the potentials can be treated as a mere mathematical device for simplifying some proofs and calculations Not until the advent of quantum field theory could it be said that the potentials themselves are part of the physical configuration of a system The earliest consequence to be accurately predicted and experimentally verified was the Aharonov Bohm effect which has no classical counterpart Nevertheless gauge freedom is still true in these theories For example the Aharonov Bohm effect depends on a line integral of A around a closed loop and this integral is not changed byA A ps displaystyle mathbf A rightarrow mathbf A nabla psi nbsp Gauge fixing in non abelian gauge theories such as Yang Mills theory and general relativity is a rather more complicated topic for details see Gribov ambiguity Faddeev Popov ghost and frame bundle An illustration edit nbsp Gauge fixing of a twisted cylinder Note the line is on the surface of the cylinder not inside it As an illustration of gauge fixing one may look at a cylindrical rod and attempt to tell whether it is twisted If the rod is perfectly cylindrical then the circular symmetry of the cross section makes it impossible to tell whether or not it is twisted However if there were a straight line drawn along the length of the rod then one could easily say whether or not there is a twist by looking at the state of the line Drawing a line is gauge fixing Drawing the line spoils the gauge symmetry i e the circular symmetry U 1 of the cross section at each point of the rod The line is the equivalent of a gauge function it need not be straight Almost any line is a valid gauge fixing i e there is a large gauge freedom In summary to tell whether the rod is twisted the gauge must be known Physical quantities such as the energy of the torsion do not depend on the gauge i e they are gauge invariant Coulomb gauge editThe Coulomb gauge also known as the transverse gauge is used in quantum chemistry and condensed matter physics and is defined by the gauge condition more precisely gauge fixing condition A r t 0 displaystyle nabla cdot mathbf A mathbf r t 0 nbsp It is particularly useful for semi classical calculations in quantum mechanics in which the vector potential is quantized but the Coulomb interaction is not The Coulomb gauge has a number of properties The potentials can be expressed in terms of instantaneous values of the fields and densities in International System of Units 1 f r t 1 4 p e 0 r r t R d 3 r displaystyle varphi mathbf r t frac 1 4 pi varepsilon 0 int frac mathbf rho mathbf r t R d 3 mathbf r nbsp A r t B r t 4 p R d 3 r displaystyle mathbf A mathbf r t nabla times int frac mathbf B mathbf r t 4 pi R d 3 mathbf r nbsp where r r t is the electric charge density R r r displaystyle mathbf R mathbf r mathbf r nbsp and R R displaystyle R left mathbf R right nbsp where r is any position vector in space and r is a point in the charge or current distribution the displaystyle nabla nbsp operates on r and d3 r is the volume element at r The instantaneous nature of these potentials appears at first sight to violate causality since motions of electric charge or magnetic field appear everywhere instantaneously as changes to the potentials This is justified by noting that the scalar and vector potentials themselves do not affect the motions of charges only the combinations of their derivatives that form the electromagnetic field strength Although one can compute the field strengths explicitly in the Coulomb gauge and demonstrate that changes in them propagate at the speed of light it is much simpler to observe that the field strengths are unchanged under gauge transformations and to demonstrate causality in the manifestly Lorentz covariant Lorenz gauge described below Another expression for the vector potential in terms of the time retarded electric current density J r t has been obtained to be 2 A r t 1 4 p e 0 0 R c t J r t t R R 3 d t d 3 r displaystyle mathbf A mathbf r t frac 1 4 pi varepsilon 0 nabla times int left int 0 R c tau frac mathbf J mathbf r t tau times mathbf R R 3 d tau right d 3 mathbf r nbsp Further gauge transformations that retain the Coulomb gauge condition might be made with gauge functions that satisfy 2ps 0 but as the only solution to this equation that vanishes at infinity where all fields are required to vanish is ps r t 0 no gauge arbitrariness remains Because of this the Coulomb gauge is said to be a complete gauge in contrast to gauges where some gauge arbitrariness remains like the Lorenz gauge below The Coulomb gauge is a minimal gauge in the sense that the integral of A2 over all space is minimal for this gauge All other gauges give a larger integral 3 The minimum value given by the Coulomb gauge is A 2 r t d 3 r B r t B r t 4 p R d 3 r d 3 r displaystyle int mathbf A 2 mathbf r t d 3 mathbf r iint frac mathbf B mathbf r t cdot mathbf B mathbf r t 4 pi R d 3 mathbf r d 3 mathbf r nbsp In regions far from electric charge the scalar potential becomes zero This is known as the radiation gauge Electromagnetic radiation was first quantized in this gauge The Coulomb gauge admits a natural Hamiltonian formulation of the evolution equations of the electromagnetic field interacting with a conserved current citation needed which is an advantage for the quantization of the theory The Coulomb gauge is however not Lorentz covariant If a Lorentz transformation to a new inertial frame is carried out a further gauge transformation has to be made to retain the Coulomb gauge condition Because of this the Coulomb gauge is not used in covariant perturbation theory which has become standard for the treatment of relativistic quantum field theories such as quantum electrodynamics QED Lorentz covariant gauges such as the Lorenz gauge are usually used in these theories Amplitudes of physical processes in QED in the noncovariant Coulomb gauge coincide with those in the covariant Lorenz gauge 4 For a uniform and constant magnetic field B the vector potential in the Coulomb gauge can be expressed in the so called symmetric gauge as A r t 1 2 r B displaystyle mathbf A mathbf r t frac 1 2 mathbf r times mathbf B nbsp plus the gradient of any scalar field the gauge function which can be confirmed by calculating the div and curl of A The divergence of A at infinity is a consequence of the unphysical assumption that the magnetic field is uniform throughout the whole of space Although this vector potential is unrealistic in general it can provide a good approximation to the potential in a finite volume of space in which the magnetic field is uniform Another common choice for homogeneous constant fields is the Landau gauge not to be confused with the R3 Landau gauge of the next section where B B z displaystyle mathbf B B hat z nbsp and A B r x y displaystyle mathbf A B mathbf r cdot hat x hat y nbsp where x y z displaystyle hat x hat y hat z nbsp are unitary vectors of the Cartesian coordinate system z axis aligned with the magnetic field As a consequence of the considerations above the electromagnetic potentials may be expressed in their most general forms in terms of the electromagnetic fields as f r t E r t 4 p R d 3 r ps r t t displaystyle varphi mathbf r t int frac nabla cdot mathbf E mathbf r t 4 pi R operatorname d 3 mathbf r frac partial psi mathbf r t partial t nbsp A r t B r t 4 p R d 3 r ps r t displaystyle mathbf A mathbf r t nabla times int frac mathbf B mathbf r t 4 pi R operatorname d 3 mathbf r nabla psi mathbf r t nbsp where ps r t is an arbitrary scalar field called the gauge function The fields that are the derivatives of the gauge function are known as pure gauge fields and the arbitrariness associated with the gauge function is known as gauge freedom In a calculation that is carried out correctly the pure gauge terms have no effect on any physical observable A quantity or expression that does not depend on the gauge function is said to be gauge invariant All physical observables are required to be gauge invariant A gauge transformation from the Coulomb gauge to another gauge is made by taking the gauge function to be the sum of a specific function which will give the desired gauge transformation and the arbitrary function If the arbitrary function is then set to zero the gauge is said to be fixed Calculations may be carried out in a fixed gauge but must be done in a way that is gauge invariant Lorenz gauge editMain article Lorenz gauge condition See also Covariant formulation of classical electromagnetism The Lorenz gauge is given in SI units by A 1 c 2 f t 0 displaystyle nabla cdot mathbf A frac 1 c 2 frac partial varphi partial t 0 nbsp and in Gaussian units by A 1 c f t 0 displaystyle nabla cdot mathbf A frac 1 c frac partial varphi partial t 0 nbsp This may be rewritten as m A m 0 displaystyle partial mu A mu 0 nbsp where A m 1 c f A displaystyle A mu left tfrac 1 c varphi mathbf A right nbsp is the electromagnetic four potential m the 4 gradient using the metric signature It is unique among the constraint gauges in retaining manifest Lorentz invariance Note however that this gauge was originally named after the Danish physicist Ludvig Lorenz and not after Hendrik Lorentz it is often misspelled Lorentz gauge Neither was the first to use it in calculations it was introduced in 1888 by George Francis FitzGerald The Lorenz gauge leads to the following inhomogeneous wave equations for the potentials 1 c 2 2 f t 2 2 f r e 0 displaystyle frac 1 c 2 frac partial 2 varphi partial t 2 nabla 2 varphi frac rho varepsilon 0 nbsp 1 c 2 2 A t 2 2 A m 0 J displaystyle frac 1 c 2 frac partial 2 mathbf A partial t 2 nabla 2 mathbf A mu 0 mathbf J nbsp It can be seen from these equations that in the absence of current and charge the solutions are potentials which propagate at the speed of light The Lorenz gauge is incomplete in some sense there remains a subspace of gauge transformations which can also preserve the constraint These remaining degrees of freedom correspond to gauge functions which satisfy the wave equation 2 ps t 2 c 2 2 ps displaystyle frac partial 2 psi partial t 2 c 2 nabla 2 psi nbsp These remaining gauge degrees of freedom propagate at the speed of light To obtain a fully fixed gauge one must add boundary conditions along the light cone of the experimental region Maxwell s equations in the Lorenz gauge simplify to m m A n m 0 j n displaystyle partial mu partial mu A nu mu 0 j nu nbsp where j n c r j displaystyle j nu left c rho mathbf j right nbsp is the four current Two solutions of these equations for the same current configuration differ by a solution of the vacuum wave equation m m A n 0 displaystyle partial mu partial mu A nu 0 nbsp In this form it is clear that the components of the potential separately satisfy the Klein Gordon equation and hence that the Lorenz gauge condition allows transversely longitudinally and time like polarized waves in the four potential The transverse polarizations correspond to classical radiation i e transversely polarized waves in the field strength To suppress the unphysical longitudinal and time like polarization states which are not observed in experiments at classical distance scales one must also employ auxiliary constraints known as Ward identities Classically these identities are equivalent to the continuity equation m j m 0 displaystyle partial mu j mu 0 nbsp Many of the differences between classical and quantum electrodynamics can be accounted for by the role that the longitudinal and time like polarizations play in interactions between charged particles at microscopic distances R3 gauges editThe R3 gauges are a generalization of the Lorenz gauge applicable to theories expressed in terms of an action principle with Lagrangian density L displaystyle mathcal L nbsp Instead of fixing the gauge by constraining the gauge field a priori via an auxiliary equation one adds a gauge breaking term to the physical gauge invariant Lagrangiand L m A m 2 2 3 displaystyle delta mathcal L frac left partial mu A mu right 2 2 xi nbsp The choice of the parameter 3 determines the choice of gauge The R3 Landau gauge is classically equivalent to Lorenz gauge it is obtained in the limit 3 0 but postpones taking that limit until after the theory has been quantized It improves the rigor of certain existence and equivalence proofs Most quantum field theory computations are simplest in the Feynman t Hooft gauge in which 3 1 a few are more tractable in other R3 gauges such as the Yennie gauge 3 3 An equivalent formulation of R3 gauge uses an auxiliary field a scalar field B with no independent dynamics d L B m A m 3 2 B 2 displaystyle delta mathcal L B partial mu A mu frac xi 2 B 2 nbsp The auxiliary field sometimes called a Nakanishi Lautrup field can be eliminated by completing the square to obtain the previous form From a mathematical perspective the auxiliary field is a variety of Goldstone boson and its use has advantages when identifying the asymptotic states of the theory and especially when generalizing beyond QED Historically the use of R3 gauges was a significant technical advance in extending quantum electrodynamics computations beyond one loop order In addition to retaining manifest Lorentz invariance the R3 prescription breaks the symmetry under local gauge transformations while preserving the ratio of functional measures of any two physically distinct gauge configurations This permits a change of variables in which infinitesimal perturbations along physical directions in configuration space are entirely uncoupled from those along unphysical directions allowing the latter to be absorbed into the physically meaningless normalization of the functional integral When 3 is finite each physical configuration orbit of the group of gauge transformations is represented not by a single solution of a constraint equation but by a Gaussian distribution centered on the extremum of the gauge breaking term In terms of the Feynman rules of the gauge fixed theory this appears as a contribution to the photon propagator for internal lines from virtual photons of unphysical polarization The photon propagator which is the multiplicative factor corresponding to an internal photon in the Feynman diagram expansion of a QED calculation contains a factor gmn corresponding to the Minkowski metric An expansion of this factor as a sum over photon polarizations involves terms containing all four possible polarizations Transversely polarized radiation can be expressed mathematically as a sum over either a linearly or circularly polarized basis Similarly one can combine the longitudinal and time like gauge polarizations to obtain forward and backward polarizations these are a form of light cone coordinates in which the metric is off diagonal An expansion of the gmn factor in terms of circularly polarized spin 1 and light cone coordinates is called a spin sum Spin sums can be very helpful both in simplifying expressions and in obtaining a physical understanding of the experimental effects associated with different terms in a theoretical calculation Richard Feynman used arguments along approximately these lines largely to justify calculation procedures that produced consistent finite high precision results for important observable parameters such as the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron Although his arguments sometimes lacked mathematical rigor even by physicists standards and glossed over details such as the derivation of Ward Takahashi identities of the quantum theory his calculations worked and Freeman Dyson soon demonstrated that his method was substantially equivalent to those of Julian Schwinger and Sin Itiro Tomonaga with whom Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics Forward and backward polarized radiation can be omitted in the asymptotic states of a quantum field theory see Ward Takahashi identity For this reason and because their appearance in spin sums can be seen as a mere mathematical device in QED much like the electromagnetic four potential in classical electrodynamics they are often spoken of as unphysical But unlike the constraint based gauge fixing procedures above the R3 gauge generalizes well to non abelian gauge groups such as the SU 3 of QCD The couplings between physical and unphysical perturbation axes do not entirely disappear under the corresponding change of variables to obtain correct results one must account for the non trivial Jacobian of the embedding of gauge freedom axes within the space of detailed configurations This leads to the explicit appearance of forward and backward polarized gauge bosons in Feynman diagrams along with Faddeev Popov ghosts which are even more unphysical in that they violate the spin statistics theorem The relationship between these entities and the reasons why they do not appear as particles in the quantum mechanical sense becomes more evident in the BRST formalism of quantization Maximal abelian gauge editIn any non abelian gauge theory any maximal abelian gauge is an incomplete gauge which fixes the gauge freedom outside of the maximal abelian subgroup Examples are For SU 2 gauge theory in D dimensions the maximal abelian subgroup is a U 1 subgroup If this is chosen to be the one generated by the Pauli matrix s3 then the maximal abelian gauge is that which maximizes the function d D x A m 1 2 A m 2 2 displaystyle int d D x left left A mu 1 right 2 left A mu 2 right 2 right nbsp where A m A m a s a displaystyle mathbf A mu A mu a sigma a nbsp For SU 3 gauge theory in D dimensions the maximal abelian subgroup is a U 1 U 1 subgroup If this is chosen to be the one generated by the Gell Mann matrices l3 and l8 then the maximal abelian gauge is that which maximizes the function d D x A m 1 2 A m 2 2 A m 4 2 A m 5 2 A m 6 2 A m 7 2 displaystyle int d D x left left A mu 1 right 2 left A mu 2 right 2 left A mu 4 right 2 left A mu 5 right 2 left A mu 6 right 2 left A mu 7 right 2 right nbsp where A m A m a l a displaystyle mathbf A mu A mu a lambda a nbsp This applies regularly in higher algebras of groups in the algebras for example the Clifford Algebra and as it is regularly Less commonly used gauges editVarious other gauges which can be beneficial in specific situations have appeared in the literature 2 Weyl gauge edit The Weyl gauge also known as the Hamiltonian or temporal gauge is an incomplete gauge obtained by the choicef 0 displaystyle varphi 0 nbsp It is named after Hermann Weyl It eliminates the negative norm ghost lacks manifest Lorentz invariance and requires longitudinal photons and a constraint on states 5 Multipolar gauge edit The gauge condition of the multipolar gauge also known as the line gauge point gauge or Poincare gauge named after Henri Poincare is r A 0 displaystyle mathbf r cdot mathbf A 0 nbsp This is another gauge in which the potentials can be expressed in a simple way in terms of the instantaneous fieldsA r t r 0 1 B u r t u d u displaystyle mathbf A mathbf r t mathbf r times int 0 1 mathbf B u mathbf r t u du nbsp f r t r 0 1 E u r t d u displaystyle varphi mathbf r t mathbf r cdot int 0 1 mathbf E u mathbf r t du nbsp Fock Schwinger gauge edit The gauge condition of the Fock Schwinger gauge named after Vladimir Fock and Julian Schwinger sometimes also called the relativistic Poincare gauge is x m A m 0 displaystyle x mu A mu 0 nbsp where xm is the position four vector Dirac gauge edit The nonlinear Dirac gauge condition named after Paul Dirac is A m A m k 2 displaystyle A mu A mu k 2 nbsp References edit Stewart A M 2003 Vector potential of the Coulomb gauge European Journal of Physics 24 5 519 524 Bibcode 2003EJPh 24 519S doi 10 1088 0143 0807 24 5 308 S2CID 250880504 a b Jackson J D 2002 From Lorenz to Coulomb and other explicit gauge transformations American Journal of Physics 70 9 917 928 arXiv physics 0204034 Bibcode 2002AmJPh 70 917J doi 10 1119 1 1491265 S2CID 119652556 Gubarev F V Stodolsky L Zakharov V I 2001 On the Significance of the Vector Potential Squared Phys Rev Lett 86 11 2220 2222 arXiv hep ph 0010057 Bibcode 2001PhRvL 86 2220G doi 10 1103 PhysRevLett 86 2220 PMID 11289894 S2CID 45172403 Adkins Gregory S 1987 09 15 Feynman rules of Coulomb gauge QED and the electron magnetic moment Physical Review D 36 6 American Physical Society APS 1929 1932 Bibcode 1987PhRvD 36 1929A doi 10 1103 physrevd 36 1929 ISSN 0556 2821 PMID 9958379 Hatfield Brian 1992 Quantum field theory of point particles and strings Addison Wesley pp 210 213 ISBN 0201360799 Further reading editLandau Lev Lifshitz Evgeny 2007 The classical theory of fields Amsterdam Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann ISBN 978 0 7506 2768 9 Jackson J D 1999 Classical Electrodynamics 3rd ed New York Wiley ISBN 0 471 30932 X Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Gauge fixing amp oldid 1221937079 Dirac gauge, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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