= What does it mean that photons are force carriers for electromagnetism?
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/61095/photon-as-the-carrier-of-the-electromagnetic-force
TODO find/create decent answer.
I think the best answer is something along:
* <local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents>. $U(1)$ gives conserved charges.
* OK now. We want a local $U(1)$ symmetry. And we also want:
* <Dirac equation>: quantum relativistic Newton's laws that specify what forces do to the fields
* <electromagnetism>: specifies what causes forces based on currents. But not what it does to masses.
Given all of that, the most obvious and direct thing we reach a guess at the <quantum electrodynamics Lagrangian> is <video Deriving the qED Lagrangian by Dietterich Labs (2018)>
A basic non-precise intuition is that a good model of reality is that electrons do not "interact with one another directly via the electromagnetic field".
A better model happens to be the <quantum field theory> view that the electromagnetic field interacts with the photon field but not directly with itself, and then the photon field interacts with parts of the electromagnetic field further away.
The more precise statement is that the <photon field> is a gauge field of the electromagnetic force under local U(1) symmetry, which is described by a <Lie group>. TODO understand.
This idea was first applied in <general relativity>, where <Einstein> understood that the "force of <gravity>" can be understood just in terms of symmetry and curvature of space. This was later applied o <quantum electrodynamics> and the entire <Standard Model>.
From <video Lorenzo Sadun on the "Yang-Mills and Mass Gap" Millennium problem>:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCQ9GIqpGBI&t=1663s mentions this idea first came about from <Hermann Weyl>.
* https://youtu.be/pCQ9GIqpGBI?t=2827 mentions that in that case the curvature is given by the <electromagnetic tensor>.
Bibliography:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtf6U3FfDNQ Symmetry and Quantum Electrodynamics (The Standard Model Part 1) by ZAP Physics (2021)
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQF7kkWjVWM The Symmetry and Simplicity of the Laws of Nature and the Higgs Boson by Juan Maldacena (2012). <Meh>, also too basic.