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Gauge fields are the messengers carrying signals between elementary particles, enabling them to interact with each other. Originating at the level of quarks, these basic interactions percolate upwards, through nuclear and atomic physics, through chemical and solid state physics, to make our everyday world go round. This book tells the story of gauge fields, from Maxwell's 1860 theory of electromagnetism to the 1954 theory of Yang and Mills that underlies the Standard Model of elementary particle theory. In the course of the narration, the author introduces people and events in experimental and theoretical physics that contribute to ideas that have shaped our conception of the physical world.
Table of content:
What Makes the World Tick?
Electromagnetism
The Vacuum is the Medium
Let There Be Light
Heroic Age: The Struggle for Quantum Theory
Quantum Reality
What is Charge?
The Zen of Rotation
YangMills Field: Non-Commuting Charges
Photons Real and Virtual
Creation and Annihilation
The Dynamical Vacuum
Elementary Particles
The Fall of Parity
The Particle Explosion
Quarks
All Interactions are Local
Broken Symmetry
Quark Confinement
Hanging Threads of Silk
The World in a Grain of Sand
In the Space of All Possible Theories