Historical roots of gauge invariance
J. D. Jackson
UC Berkeley/LBNL
Abstract
A number of reviews of gauge theories cover the period from about 1929
(Weyl's major paper on the subject) to the present day, with stress on
the post-Yang-Mills epoch. I discuss the "pre-history" of the
subject, starting with Ampere, Neumann, Weber, and others, and the
debates over the "correct" form of the vector potential. The story
continues with Maxwell, Lorenz, Helmholtz, Clausius, and Lorentz by
which time the idea of different, equivalent gauges for the potentials
in classical electromagnetism had been clarified completely. We then
come to the annus mirabilus, 1926, with Fock's discovery of the phase
transformation of the wave function that must accompany a gauge change
of the potentials. The unfair belittlement of the contributions of
Lorenz and Fock are aired.
Portraits of all the "electricians" will be presented as the
story unfolds.
[Reference: J. D. Jackson and Lev Okun, Rev. Mod. Phys. Vol.
73, 663- 680 (2001)]
Dave Jackson is a a particle theorist who served as
Acting Head of the FNAL Theoretical Physics Department in
1972-73. Now Emeritus, he has been at Berkeley since 1967.
He is the author of a well known text, Classical
Electrodynamics, and a 1992 essay on the founding of the
Wine & Cheese seminar (copies available at the talk).