The Problem With Yang Mills Theories

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Maxwell knew that you could construct what we now call the gauge field for electromagnetism. He didn't have the idea that matter fields like the electron would also be fields with their own ways of changing under these gauge symmetries, but he knew about gauge invariance. Yang Mills theories are theories with connections with gauge invariance, but in a more complicated way. The symmetry group does not commute with itself, it matters which symmetry, transformation you do first and then second versus second and first.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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