There is a sign inconsistency in the printed model. For the ordinary cross product let . The vector triple-product identity gives . Consequently the printed has gauge curvature
Its gauge curvature cannot instead contain the printed negative quadratic term. For a noncommuting pure gauge potential for this gauge covariant derivative, whereas . Thus the printed gauge kinetic term assigns a nonzero value to a connection obtained by applying the gauge-field transformation law to the zero connection. Literally the printed action has global rotations but not the requested local triplet gauge symmetry. The cross-product convention for an adjoint covariant derivative makes the minimal repair explicit: change the gauge field strength quadratic term to a plus sign, retaining the printed gauge covariant derivative. Changing the sign in the gauge covariant derivative instead would be another consistent convention. The remaining calculation uses the first repair.
The corrected theory has local SO(3) gauge symmetry, equivalently the adjoint-field realization of the SU(2) Lie algebra; its adjoint scalar fields and gauge fields are insensitive to the center of a group of SU(2). Explicitly, and
Both and transform as triplets, so their dot products and the scalar potential are invariant. Assume , and take without loss of generality. For the minima have . Choose the scalar-field vacuum , whose stabilizer consists of rotations around the third axis: the residual gauge symmetry is SO(2), locally U(1).
In unitary gauge write , and . These are the neutral massless gauge field, two charged massive gauge fields and a real radial scalar field. Define
Substitution gives and . The entire physical-field Lagrangian density is therefore
In particular ; this directly verifies the scalar field kinetic and vector mass terms. Expanding the scalar potential gives . Comparing the quadratic terms with standard real scalar field and charged-vector mass terms yields the adjoint triplet Higgs spectrum,
This also rewrites the purely vector interactions, which are already contained in the displayed gauge field strengths rather than omitted from the theory.
The original symmetry remains unbroken at . The unique minimum is then , with three massless gauge fields and three massless real scalar field components; the quartic scalar field interaction remains. The physical degrees of freedom number . At the two broken generators supply two Goldstone bosons, eaten to give longitudinal gauge-boson polarizations of the charged vectors. The physical count is : two massive vectors, one massless vector and one radial scalar field. The scalar components eaten in unitary gauge are not additional physical particles.
For the broken phase all interactions containing the physical scalar field are
Multiplying interaction coefficients by and differentiating with respect to the external fields includes the identical-field factorials. The scalar vertices of an adjoint triplet Higgs model are
For example, the rule contains , whereas the rule contains only from its two identical scalar fields. There are no or vertices: the radial scalar field is neutral under the residual U(1). There is no derivative scalar-vector vertex in this physical spectrum in unitary gauge.
Figure 1.
All physical-scalar interaction vertices in the broken triplet Higgs model, with the unbroken-phase scalar vertices shown below; dashed lines are scalars and wavy lines are vectors
. Details.
For completeness, if the unbroken phase is chosen, its physical scalar fields are the three components , not a single radial . Expanding its gauge-covariant kinetic term gives
With all momenta incoming and Fourier transform convention , the three unbroken-phase rules are
The first rule follows by differentiating once on each possible scalar: for , the interaction is , which fixes the momentum sign. The remaining rules follow from the quadratic gauge interaction and . There are no unbroken-phase cubic scalar field Feynman vertices.
Write and . The proposed gauge-field transformation law becomes . Consequently
Both and its gauge covariant derivative therefore transform as the same multiplet, with no derivative of the local parameter left over. The original algebraic invariance of the Lagrangian density now applies pointwise to , so this constructs the local symmetry.
Also transform by . Antisymmetry gives , so the source coupling is invariant. Let denote the functional derivative at a point. Vary the action functional and integrate the derivative of by parts, taking the local parameter to have compact support:
Since every is arbitrary, its coefficient vanishes. This proves the requested local identity, including the derivative sign and the order of the structure-constant indices.
For the generating functional, the integral of the first term is zero as a change-of-variable identity:
The divergence of this vector field in field space is proportional to . Thus an invariant regulated functional measure, with no gauge anomaly, leaves no Jacobian term. Inserting the classical identity into the integral gives
The same first-order differential operator annihilates the connected generating functional , because . Its source term is .
For the specified Legendre transform, vary . Since , the terms involving cancel, leaving
Antisymmetry also gives . Substitution in the identity for , followed by multiplication by , proves the background gauge invariance of a scalar effective action:
The derivatives of the quantum effective action are proper, amputated one-particle-irreducible vertices. At each loop order they receive contributions from one-particle-irreducible Feynman diagrams with the indicated external scalar legs, including tree vertices and the required counterterms. Diagrams which disconnect after cutting one internal line are not additional proper-vertex contributions. Translation invariance supplies the overall momentum-conserving delta function factored out in the definition. The signs of these vertices must follow the chosen overall convention for .
Differentiate the effective-action identity twice with respect to and and set . In an invariant zero-field vacuum this gives the Ward identity contact terms
The term proportional to vanishes. With the printed Fourier factors , integration by parts turns into . The first delta function combines with , and the second combines with . Using and symmetry of the scalar two-point kernel then yields
This derivation fixes the relative signs independently of any vertex rule.
There is an overall-sign inconsistency in the final printed example. At tree level, stationarity of the source integral gives , hence the specified transform gives . For the free scalar multiplet this implies, after factoring out the delta function,
The mixed result follows by expanding to first order in : its contribution is . The two scalar derivatives yield . Momentum conservation gives
so both sides of the Ward identity equal . Because the scalar theory is Gaussian for prescribed , its fluctuation determinant depends on but not on ; it cannot add further two-scalar vertices. Thus this quadratic verification is sufficient, not merely the first term of an omitted scalar-loop correction.
The printed mixed vertex instead has a minus sign. It satisfies the same Ward identity if one uses the opposite effective-action convention at tree level, because its two-point vertex is then as well. Either overall convention works, but the printed Legendre transform and printed mixed vertex cannot both be used unchanged. For example, with and a nonzero generator, they give opposite sides of the claimed identity.
A Non-Abelian gauge theory promotes an internal group representation symmetry to a spacetime-dependent transformation and introduces a gauge field so that differentiation transforms covariantly. The symmetry is a gauge redundancy: physically meaningful quantities must be invariant under local changes of field representative. We work in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime with signature , and use skew-Hermitian matrix generators throughout.
For the compact Simple Lie group , its real Lie algebra has a negative-definite Killing form. Hence is a positive invariant bilinear form on a Lie algebra. Choose a -orthonormal basis , , with . Invariance makes fully antisymmetric. This construction uses the Adjoint representation and works independently of any chosen scalar representation.
Let be a Lie-algebra-valued gauge potential, with the coupling absorbed into this connection. If is the given finite-dimensional irreducible representation of , its Lie algebra representation defines
For a finite local transformation , require and . Differentiating the first equation forces the gauge-field transformation law
Thus the gauge potential transforms inhomogeneously; an ordinary derivative alone would leave an uncancelled derivative of .
The commutator of gauge covariant derivatives determines the gauge field strength:
The Lie algebra representation preserves the bracket, so this formula holds for any , including a trivial scalar representation. The gauge field strength itself is defined in the gauge algebra. The transformation of the connection implies
It is therefore covariant, rather than invariant as a Lie-algebra-valued quantity.
For infinitesimal , the same equations give the infinitesimal gauge transformation with an anti-Hermitian connection:
Substitution into cancels the terms containing and gives , the gauge covariance of a scalar covariant derivative.
The Yang-Mills theory has Lagrangian density
This is the Killing-form Yang-Mills Lagrangian. Its sign uses a positive internal form and the stated spacetime signature. In a -orthonormal basis it is . Gauge invariance follows because is invariant under the adjoint group action. Infinitesimally, the variation is proportional to
After rescaling , the gauge coupling appears in and in the non-Abelian part of the canonically normalized field strength. Squaring that field strength gives cubic and quartic gauge-field self-interactions. An ordinary local quadratic mass term in the gauge potential is not invariant because its transformation contains .
For the scalar field kinetic term, compactness supplies a positive invariant Hermitian form on its representation space. One can obtain it by averaging any positive form with normalized Haar measure, the unitarization of a compact-group representation. Then is unitary for , and is anti-Hermitian. The Yang-Mills theory coupled to an arbitrary scalar representation has
Here is any real gauge-invariant scalar potential, so . For example,
is available for every unitary representation, with giving a bounded quartic contribution. Other invariant interactions may exist for particular representations; the potential is not required to depend only on .
The scalar kinetic term is gauge-invariant because both covariant derivatives transform by the same unitary . Infinitesimally its variation vanishes by
The potential is invariant by its defining condition. For a real irreducible representation, use the averaged positive symmetric form instead and write the kinetic term as ; all transformation and invariance arguments remain valid. Expansion of the covariant kinetic term produces both the linear gauge-scalar interaction and the quadratic term needed by local gauge invariance.
The invariant inner products, gauge covariant derivatives and gauge field strength together construct the full theory for every compact Simple Lie group and every supplied finite-dimensional irreducible representation of the scalar fields. Both finite and infinitesimal transformation laws have been included, and every sign follows the same anti-Hermitian convention.
Use anti-Hermitian representation matrices for the unitary representation, so . Absorb the gauge coupling into the connection, consistently with the transformation law in the PDF. The appropriate gauge covariant derivative is
This has a plus sign because the inhomogeneous part of the connection transformation is . Its variation is
Thus gauge covariance of a scalar covariant derivative gives
The cancellation uses that is a Lie algebra representation, including its commutator identity.
The gauge field strength is
It is the curvature appearing in . The index positions in the PDF are related by the constant Minkowski metric; lowering the index in its transformation law gives the convention used here.
Take signature , let be a real symmetric gauge-invariant internal form, and let be the positive Hermitian form preserved by the unitary matter representation. One consistent Lorentz transformation scalar Lagrangian density is
Here , , and give a simple stable potential. The coupling is in the kinetic normalization because it was absorbed into ; it is not inserted again into . Taking a zero or another gauge-invariant potential is also possible. A positive nondegenerate gives the usual physical gauge kinetic energy, as for a compact gauge algebra. More generally the invariance calculation below applies to any symmetric invariant bilinear form on a Lie algebra, including the Killing form.
Under the infinitesimal gauge-field transformation law,
Invariance and symmetry of give the cancellation. For matter, both and transform by , so anti-Hermiticity gives
for either pairing used in the Lagrangian. Its potential is a function of the invariant scalar norm. Therefore , establishing gauge invariance of this Yang-Mills theory coupled to a scalar. Contraction of spacetime indices with the Minkowski metric gives Lorentz invariance.
For the Adjoint representation, define the Lie algebra structure constants by
Internal superscripts here are basis labels, as in the paper; spacetime indices alone are raised with the Minkowski metric. The adjoint covariant derivative and curvature have components
These formulas involve no extra factor of , because the generators use the Lie-algebra convention rather than Hermitian physics generators.
To make the Killing-form sign explicit, write and . The literal contraction requested in the paper corresponds to . For a compact real form of a complex semisimple gauge algebra, its actual positive inner product has , since the Killing form is negative definite. With a complex adjoint scalar, the fully expanded Killing-form Lagrangian for an adjoint scalar is
All repeated internal labels are summed; explains the absence of from the quartic term. Invariance is equivalently the component identity . For a real adjoint scalar, omit complex conjugation and insert in the scalar kinetic and quadratic mass terms; the same invariance proof applies.
The PDF's identification of the Killing form with an inner product thus requires a sign convention. It also requires nondegeneracy if it is to give ordinary kinetic terms: on an Abelian gauge factor the Killing form vanishes, so an additional invariant metric is needed there. These qualifications do not alter the covariance identities or the formal gauge invariance of the displayed Killing-form contractions.
Require
for every . Expanding and cancelling gives
Right multiplication by yields the gauge-field transformation law