Gauge Theory and the Geometrization of Physics

This Element describes how modern physics relies on geometric ideas, and on symmetries in particular.

This Element is broadly about the geometrization of physics, but mostly it is about gauge theories. The over-arching question this Element aims to answer is: why is descriptive redundancy fruitful for physics? It provides three inter-related answers: pragmatic, or methodological; based on geometrical considerations, and broadly relational.This Element is broadly about the geometrization of physics, but mostly it is about gauge theories. Gauge theories lie at the heart of modern physics: in particular, they constitute the Standard Model of particle physics. At its simplest, the idea of gauge is that nature is best described using a descriptively redundant language; the different descriptions are said to be related by a gauge symmetry. The over-arching question this Element aims to answer is: why is descriptive redundancy fruitful for physics? I will provide three inter-related answers to the question: ``Why gauge theory?'', that is: why introduce redundancies in our models of nature in the first place? The first is pragmatic, or methodological; the second is based on geometrical considerations, and the third is broadly relational.