## [转载]What’s a Gauge?

From: Terence Tao’s blog: What’s a Gauge.

Gauge theory” is a term which has connotations of being a fearsomely complicated part of mathematics – for instance, playing an important role in quantum field theory, general relativity, geometric PDE, and so forth. But the underlying concept is really quite simple: a gauge is nothing more than a “coordinate system” that varies depending on one’s “location” with respect to some “base space” or “parameter space”, a gauge transform is a change of coordinates applied to each such location, and a gauge theory is a model for some physical or mathematical system to which gauge transforms can be applied (and is typically gauge invariant, in that all physically meaningful quantities are left unchanged (or transform naturally) under gauge transformations). By fixing a gauge (thus breaking or spending the gauge symmetry), the model becomes something easier to analyse mathematically, such as a system of partial differential equations (in classical gauge theories) or a perturbative quantum field theory (in quantum gauge theories), though the tractability of the resulting problem can be heavily dependent on the choice of gauge that one fixed. Deciding exactly how to fix a gauge (or whether one should spend the gauge symmetry at all) is a key question in the analysis of gauge theories, and one that often requires the input of geometric ideas and intuition into that analysis. Continue Reading

## Overview of moduli spaces,review of G-bundles and connections

All the contents are from this wikisite, which is aimed to have a E-version lecture notes of the seminar given by Prof. Mrowka. All rights are reserved by the original wikisite, any reprint should be indicate this.
Main Contributor:Christian

These lecture notes are based on notes from the 18.999 geometry seminar class taught by Tomasz Mrowka and from the IAS/Park city Mathematic series book Gauge theory and the topology of four-manifolds 1. Moduli spaces A moduli space can be viewed as a geometric object which classifies the solutions of some problem. For example, there is the moduli space of $n$-tuples of points in $I=[0,1]$,that is, points in $I^{n}$ modulo symmetric transformations:$I^{n}/ Sym_{n}$. Given a complex vector space $V$ of dimension $n$, we can look at the space of endomorphisms of $V$ modulo isomorphisms: