Theory HEP Seminar

Chern-Weil Global Symmetries and How Quantum Gravity Avoids Them

Ben Heidenreich

UMass Amherst

Gauge theories naturally contain “Chern-Weil” generalized global symmetries with conserved currents built from wedge products of the field-strength tensors. Such global symmetries must be absent in quantum gravities, and I discuss how they are eliminated through a combination of gauging and breaking. These global symmetries and the methods required to eliminate them relate to many familiar aspects of quantum field theories and quantum gravities, and provide a unified framework for discussing them.