Monopoles, Abelian projection, and gauge invariance
- Dipartimento di Fisica and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa (Italy)
- Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Via Beirut 2-4, 34151 Trieste (Italy)
- Dipartimento di Fisica and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Via Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze (Italy)
A direct connection is proved between the non-Abelian Bianchi Identities (NABI's) and the Abelian Bianchi identities for the 't Hooft tensor. As a consequence, the existence of a nonzero magnetic current is related to the violation of the NABI's and is a gauge-invariant property. The construction allows us to show that not all Abelian projections can be used to expose monopoles in lattice configurations: each field configuration with nonzero magnetic charge identifies its natural projection, up to gauge transformations which tend to unity at large distances. It is shown that the so-called maximal-Abelian gauge is a legitimate choice. It is also proven, starting from the NABI, that monopole condensation is a physical gauge-invariant phenomenon, independent of the choice of the Abelian projection.
- OSTI ID:
- 21409647
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 81, Issue 8; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.085022; (c) 2010 The American Physical Society; ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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