On the hydrodynamical description of gauge theories (Q1080209)

The configuration space of gauge theories is the space Q of connections on a principal fibre bundle. In this space acts the group \({\mathcal G}\) of gauge transformations. The orbit space \(Q/{\mathcal G}\) is the object of real interest but is very hard to analyze. In this paper \(Q/{\mathcal G}\) is parametrized in a canonical and gauge independent way, but: only for gauge fields interacting with matter fields, only on regions on the base manifolds where the matter field is nonzero, and only for ''generic'' matter fields. So no results on the global structure of \(Q/{\mathcal G}\) are obtained. In the case of scalar electrodynamics the construction leads to the hydrodynamical quantities obtained earlier by \textit{I. Bialynicki-Birula} [Relativistic quantum mechanics of dyons. Exact solutions, Phys. Rev. D 3, 2413-2415 (1971)] and \textit{S. Mandelstam} [Ann. Phys. 19, 1-24 (1962; Zbl 0107.228)]. Then the construction is applied to two models with structure group SU(2) in two different representations.