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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14079 |
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| _version_ | 1866909849624772608 |
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| author | Del Grosso, Loris Kaplan, David E. Serra, Francesco |
| author_facet | Del Grosso, Loris Kaplan, David E. Serra, Francesco |
| contents | We show that both abelian and non-abelian gauge theories admit configurations in which the fields behave as if in the presence of static charge densities, or ``shadow charges". These correspond to nontrivial initial conditions for the fields that generate gauge transformations, the Gauss' law operators. In non-abelian theories, such configurations seem to demand additional physical fields with exactly static charge densities. In contrast with this expectation, we show that gauge theory alone provides a consistent and gauge-invariant description of shadow charges. Canonical quantization then yields continuous shadow charges for abelian theories and quantized ones for non-abelian theories. In general, our findings indicate that all local conservation laws give rise to gauge symmetries, even in the presence of second-class constraints. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_14079 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Shadow sectors of gauge theories Del Grosso, Loris Kaplan, David E. Serra, Francesco High Energy Physics - Theory We show that both abelian and non-abelian gauge theories admit configurations in which the fields behave as if in the presence of static charge densities, or ``shadow charges". These correspond to nontrivial initial conditions for the fields that generate gauge transformations, the Gauss' law operators. In non-abelian theories, such configurations seem to demand additional physical fields with exactly static charge densities. In contrast with this expectation, we show that gauge theory alone provides a consistent and gauge-invariant description of shadow charges. Canonical quantization then yields continuous shadow charges for abelian theories and quantized ones for non-abelian theories. In general, our findings indicate that all local conservation laws give rise to gauge symmetries, even in the presence of second-class constraints. |
| title | Shadow sectors of gauge theories |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Theory |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14079 |