Introducing Yang-Mills theory (eventually: quantum chromodynamics):
On the braid group, knot theory and braid representations via the quantum Yang-Baxter equation:
On the Aharonov-Bohm effect, generalized to non-abelian Yang-Mills theory and its description by connections on fiber bundles in physics:
On Dirac monopoles:
Tai Tsun Wu, Chen Ning Yang, Dirac monopole without strings: monopole harmonics, Nuclear Physics B107:3 (1976) 365–380
Tai Tsun Wu, Chen Ning Yang, Dirac’s monopole without strings: Classical Lagrangian theory, Phys. Rev. D 14, 437 (1976)
On the historical origin of Maxwell's equations, the “vector potential” and (Yang-Mills) gauge theory:
A. C. T. Wu, Chen Ning Yang, Evolution of the concept of vector potential in the description of the fundamental interactions, International Journal of Modern Physics A 21 16 (2006) 3235-3277 [doi:10.1142/S0217751X06033143]
Chen Ning Yang, The conceptual origins of Maxwell’s equations and gauge theory, Phyics Today 67 11 (2014) [doi:10.1063/PT.3.2585, pdf]
On Yang-Mills theory (gauge theory) being about connections on principal bundles/fiber bundles:
Yang wrote in C. N. Yang, Selected papers, 1945-1980, with commentary, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1983, on p. 567:
In 1975, impressed with the fact that gauge fields are connections on fiber bundles, I drove to the house of S. S. Chern in El Cerrito, near Berkeley… I said I found it amazing that gauge theory are exactly connections on fiber bundles, which the mathematicians developed without reference to the physical world. I added: “this is both thrilling and puzzling, since you mathematicians dreamed up these concepts out of nowhere.” He immediately protested: “No, no. These concepts were not dreamed up. They were natural and real.”
Yang expanded on this passage in an interview recorded as
This was not just joy. There was something more, something deeper: After all, what could be more mysterious, what could be more awe-inspiring, than to find that the structure of the physical world is intimately tied to the deep mathematical concepts, concepts which were developed out of considerations rooted only in logic and the beauty of form?
Last revised on January 24, 2024 at 09:12:57. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.