Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 304 4 d i Solution 2026-10-03
Without gauge fixing, every gauge orbit is integrated infinitely many times and the quadratic gauge-field operator has a zero mode in field theory for every pure-gauge direction. It therefore has no inverse and no propagator. A gauge condition selects one representative per orbit, up to global transformations and the possible nonperturbative Gribov ambiguity, and makes perturbative Gaussian integration well defined.