Fiber Bundles and Gauge Theories

Herbert Joseph Bernstein, Anthony V. Phillips

P. Moylan

Borros Arneth

Quantum mechanics is traditionally formulated on complex Hilbert spaces, whereas gauge theories are formulated on fiber bundles equipped with connections and curvature. Despite the central role of geometry in modern physics, the Hilbert-space structure of quantum theory is usually postulated rather than derived. In this work, we investigate a differential-geometric formulation in which quantum states are represented as points on a coherence manifold characterized by a radial coherence coordinate and a holonomy-induced phase coordinate. The resulting geometry naturally admits the structure of a fiber bundle whose base space is associated with a coherence lattice and whose fiber corresponds to a phase circle. Within this framework, Hilbert spaces emerge as function spaces defined on the coherence manifold, while Schrödinger dynamics arise from the Laplace–Beltrami operator associated with the underlying geometry. The construction unifies concepts from geometric quantum mechanics, fiber-bundle gauge theory, holonomy, and coherence geometry within a common differential-geometric framework.

Toshihiro Iwai

A several-particle system is called a molecule in the Born–Oppenheimer approximation. The nonrigidity of molecules involves difficulty in molecular dynamics. Guichardet [A. Guichardet, Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré 40, 329 (1984)] showed recently that the vibration motion cannot in general be separated from the rotation motion, by using the connection theory in differential geometry. The point of his theory is the observation that a center-of-mass system is made into a principal fiber bundle with rotation group as the structure group, and is equipped with a connection by the Eckart condition of rotationless constraint. The base manifold of this bundle is called the internal space. The fact that the connection has nonvanishing curvature gives rise to the nonseparability of vibration from rotation. This is a mathematical meaning of nonrigidity of molecules. As an application of the connection theory due to Guichardet, this paper establishes a gauge theory for nonrigid molecules on the basis of the observation that the vector bundle associated with the principal fiber bundle (the center-of-mass system) provides a setting for quantum mechanics of the ‘‘internal’’ molecular motion. The interest, however, centers on planar triatomic molecules in order to put forward the gauge theory in an explicit manner. The conclusion is this: The internal space of a planar triatomic molecule is diffeomorphic with R3−{0}, and endowed with Dirac’s monopole field which may be interpreted as a Coriolis field induced by the rotation. The angular momentum eigenvalues, which are twice the quantized monopole strengths, assign the complex line bundles over the internal space. The internal states of the molecule are described as the cross sections of the complex line bundle, on which the internal Hamiltonian operator acts in minimally coupling with the monopole field.

Richard Healey

Yuval Ne’eman

I show that, in the geometry of a fiber bundle describing a gauge theory, curvature and parallel transport ensure and impose nonseparability. The "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox" is thus resolved "classically." I conjecture that the ostentatiously "implausible" features of the quantum treatment are due to the fact that space-time separability, a basic assumption of single-particle nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, does not fit the bundle geometry of the complete physics.