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arXiv · 2510.14079

Shadow sectors of gauge theories

Loris Del Grosso·David E. Kaplan·Francesco Serra
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Abstract

We show that both abelian and non-abelian gauge theories admit configurations in which the fields behave as if in the presence of static charge densities, or ``shadow charges". These correspond to nontrivial initial conditions for the fields that generate gauge transformations, the Gauss' law operators. In non-abelian theories, such configurations seem to demand additional physical fields with exactly static charge densities. In contrast with this expectation, we show that gauge theory alone provides a consistent and gauge-invariant description of shadow charges. Canonical quantization then yields continuous shadow charges for abelian theories and quantized ones for non-abelian theories. In general, our findings indicate that all local conservation laws give rise to gauge symmetries, even in the presence of second-class constraints.

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Loris Del Grosso, David E. Kaplan, Francesco Serra. 2025-10-15. Shadow sectors of gauge theories. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14079

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