Weak gauge principle and electric charge quantization

DOI10.1088/0305-4470/39/30/013MaRDI QIDQ5484461zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors E. Minguzzi, Carlos Prieto, A. López Almorox

Publication date 17 August 2006

Published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0510016

zbMATH Keywords

charge quantizationgauge principle

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Yang-Mills and other gauge theories in quantum field theory (81T13) Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds (81T20) Electromagnetic interaction; quantum electrodynamics (81V10) Differential geometric methods, including holonomy, Berry and Hannay phases, Aharonov-Bohm effect, etc. in quantum theory (81Q70) Classical field theories (70S99)

Abstract: Starting from a weak gauge principle we give a new and critical revision of the argument leading to charge quantization on arbitrary spacetimes. The main differences of our approach with respect to previous works appear on spacetimes with non trivial torsion elements on its second integral cohomology group. We show that in these spacetimes there can be topologically non-trivial configurations of charged fields which do not imply charge quantization. However, the existence of a non-exact electromagnetic field always implies the quantization of charges. Another consequence of the theory for spacetimes with torsion is the fact that it gives rise to two natural quantization units that could be identified with the electric quantization unit (realized inside the quarks) and with the electron charge. In this framework the color charge can have a topological origin, with the number of colors being related to the order of the torsion subgroup. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the quantization of charge may be due to a weak non-exact component of the electromagnetic field extended over cosmological scales.

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