Unification of force and substance
Name
Unification of force and substance.pdf
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214.74 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
57d1e047758e5641f487c82a06aab8b7
Author(s)
Wilczek, Frank
Date Issued
July 2016
Journal
Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences
Publisher
Royal Society, The
Citation
Wilczek, Frank. “Unification of Force and Substance.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 374, no. 2075 (July 2016): 20150257.
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
Maxwell’s mature presentation of his equations emphasized the unity of electromagnetism and mechanics, subsuming both as ‘dynamical systems’. That intuition of unity has proved both fruitful, as a source of pregnant concepts, and broadly inspiring. A deep aspect of Maxwell’s work is its use of redundant potentials, and the associated requirement of gauge symmetry. Those concepts have become central to our present understanding of fundamental physics, but they can appear to be rather formal and esoteric. Here I discuss two things: the physical significance of gauge invariance, in broad terms; and some tantalizing prospects for further unification, building on that concept, that are visible on the horizon today. If those prospects are realized, Maxwell’s vision of the unity of field and substance will be brought to a new level.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2015.0257
