Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

The Gauss Law : A Tale

A.P. Balachandran

Syracuse University

The Gauss law plays a basic role in gauge theories, enforcing gauge invariance and
creating edge states and superselection sectors .This talk surveys these aspects of the Gauss law
in QED, QCD and nonlinear G/H models.It is argued that nonabelian super selection rules are spontaneously broken. That is the case with SU (3) of colour which is spontaneously broken to U(1) x U(1). Nonlinear G/H models are reformulated as gauge theories and the existence of edge states
and superselection sectors in these models is also established.