Summary: August 19, 1999 15:16 WSPC/139-IJMPA 0136
International Journal of Modern Physics A, Vol. 14, No. 21 (1999) 3421­3432
c World Scientific Publishing Company
NON-ABELIAN GAUGE THEORIES AS A CONSEQUENCE
OF PERTURBATIVE QUANTUM GAUGE INVARIANCE
A. ASTE and G. SCHARF
Institut f¨ur Theoretische Physik der Universit¨at Z¨urich,
Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Z¨urich, Switzerland
Received 20 May 1998
Revised 29 January 1999
We show for the case of interacting massless vector bosons, how the structure of Yang­
Mills theories emerges automatically from a more fundamental concept, namely pertur-
bative quantum gauge invariance. It turns out that the coupling in a non-Abelian gauge
theory is necessarily of Yang­Mills type plus divergence- and coboundary-couplings. The
extension of the method to massive gauge theories is briefly discussed.
Keywords: Field theory, S-matrix theory, General properties of quantum chromo-
dynamics.
1. Introduction
It is a well-known fact that gauge theories have many pleasing features. Apart from
the beauty of the mathematical structure of the classical theories, it is the renor-

Source: Aste, Andreas - Institut für Physik, Universität Basel

Collections: Physics