Clay数学问题之Y M问题 Quantum Yang Mills Theory英文文献.pdfVIP

Quantum Yang-Mills Theory Arthur Jaffe and Edward Witten 1 The Physics of Gauge Theory Since the early part of the twentieth century, it has been understood that quantum mechanics is needed to describe nature at the subatomic scale. In quantum mechanics, the position and velocity of a particle are noncommuting operators acting on a Hilbert space, and classical notions such as “the trajectory of a particle” do not apply. But quantum mechanics of particles is not the whole story. In nineteenth and early twentieth century physics, many aspects of nature were described in terms of fields – the electric and magnetic fields that enter in Maxwell’s equations, and the gravitational field governed by Einstein’s equations. It was clear by the late 1920’s that, since fields interact with particles, to give an internally coherent account of nature, the quantum concepts must be applied to fields as well as particles. When this is done, quantities such as the components of the electric field at different points in spacetime become noncommuting operators. When one constructs a Hilbert space in which these operators act, one finds many surprises. The distinction between fields and particles breaks down, since the Hilbert space of a quantum field is constructed in terms of particle-like excitations. Conventional particles, such as electrons, are reinterpreted as arising from the quantization of a field. In the process, one finds the prediction of “antimatter”; for every particle, there must be a corresponding antiparticle, with the same mass and opposite electric charge. Soon after being predicted by P. A. M. Dirac on the basis of quantum field theory, the “positron” or oppositely charged antiparticle of the electron was discovered in cosmic rays. The Quantum Field T