Yang-Mills-Stueckelberg Theories, Framing and Local Breaking of Symmetries

TL;DR

This paper explores how framing and local symmetry breaking in Yang-Mills and gravity theories can generate effective mass for gauge bosons and gravitons, potentially explaining confinement and mass generation in a localized manner.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framing approach over submanifolds, linking Stueckelberg fields to local mass generation and symmetry breaking in gauge and gravitational theories.

Findings

The charged condensate acts as a Stueckelberg field generating gluon mass.

Framing over submanifolds can induce local mass for gravitons.

Local symmetry breaking may explain confinement phenomena.

Abstract

We consider Yang-Mills theory with a compact structure group $G$ on a Lorentzian 4-manifold $M={\mathbb R}\times\Sigma$ such that gauge transformations become identity on a submanifold $S$ of $\Sigma$ (framing over $S\subset\Sigma$). The space $S$ is not necessarily a boundary of $\Sigma$ and can have dimension $k\le 3$. Framing of gauge bundles over $S\subset\Sigma$ demands introduction of a $G$-valued function $\phi_S$ with support on $S$ and modification of Yang-Mills equations along ${\mathbb R}\times S\subset M$. The fields $\phi_S$ parametrize nonequivalent flat connections mapped into each other by a dynamical group ${\mathcal G}_S$ changing gauge frames over $S$. It is shown that the charged condensate $\phi_S$ is the Stueckelberg field generating an effective mass of gluons in the domain $S$ of space $\Sigma$ and keeping them massless outside $S$. We argue that the local Stueckelberg field $\phi_S$ can be responsible for color confinement. We also briefly discuss local breaking of symmetries in gravity. It is shown that framing of the tangent bundle over a subspace of space-time makes gravitons massive in this subspace.