8 papers
Ghosts that Connect
Henrique Gomes
What is a Faddeev--Popov ghost? The textbook answer is that it is a trick: a way of writing a functional determinant as a term in the action, and nothing more. Dougherty 2021 and D…
The geometry-first formulation of gauge theory is not equivalent to the symmetry-first one
Henrique Gomes
This paper argues that the geometry-first and symmetry-first formulations of gauge theory are not equivalent. They differ in three respects. First, the geometry-first formulation--…
Making Symmetry Explicit: The Limits of Sophistication
Henrique Gomes
Symmetry is often treated in philosophy of physics as an interpretive problem. A particularly lively dispute concerns local symmetries: do they indicate surplus structure that ough…
The Aharonov-Bohm effect: reality and folklore
Henrique Gomes
The Aharonov-Bohm (A-B) effect has been a major focus of the foundations of physics. And yet, much confusion persists. In particular, the effect purportedly leads to a dilemma: on…
Charge quantisation without compactness: the Higgs and Yukawa mechanisms from matter geometry
Henrique Gomes
In the \emph{geometry-first} formulation of gauge theory \citep{Gomes_internal}, Hermitian vector bundles and their covariant derivatives are the primitive objects. Here gauge grou…
Boundaries, frames and the issue of physical covariance
Henrique Gomes, Simon Langenscheidt, Daniele Oriti
We focus on three distinct lines of recent developments: edge modes and boundary charges in gravitational physics, relational dynamics in classical and quantum gravity, and quantum…
The hole argument meets Noether's theorem
Henrique Gomes
The hole argument of general relativity threatens a radical and pernicious form of indeterminism. One natural response to the argument is that points belonging to different but iso…
Representational conventions and invariant structure
Henrique Gomes
In the philosophical literature, symmetries of physical theories are most often interpreted within the general doctrine called 'Sophistication'. Roughly speaking, it says that mode…