Thin homotopy and the holonomy approach to gauge theories
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Publication:5085342
Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to differential geometry (53-02) Issues of holonomy in differential geometry (53C29) Homotopy equivalences in algebraic topology (55P10) Differential geometric methods, including holonomy, Berry and Hannay phases, Aharonov-Bohm effect, etc. in quantum theory (81Q70) Geometries with differentiable structure (51H25)
Abstract: We survey several mathematical developments in the holonomy approach to gauge theory. A cornerstone of this approach is the introduction of group structures on spaces of based loops on a smooth manifold, relying on certain homotopy equivalence relations -- such as the so-called thin homotopy -- and the resulting interpretation of gauge fields as group homomorphisms to a Lie group satisfying a suitable smoothness condition, encoding the holonomy of a gauge orbit of smooth connections on a principal -bundle. We also prove several structural results on thin homotopy, and in particular we clarify the difference between thin equivalence and retrace equivalence for piecewise-smooth based loops on a smooth manifold, which are often used interchangeably in the physics literature. We conclude by listing a set of questions on topological and functional analytic aspects of groups of based loops, which we consider to be fundamental to establish a rigorous differential geometric foundation of the holonomy formulation of gauge theory.
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