I'm having a hard time trying to get my head around the fundamentals of gauge theory. I've taken classes in QFT and Particle Symmetries recently, both of which touch on the topic, but neither explained it in detail. Browsing the Wikipedia entry on gauge theory gives me the same heuristic arguments I've read hundreds of times, together with some mathematical formalism that's totally impenetrable.  Does anyone know of an introductory book that will explain gauge symmetries, the gauge group and their applications to a grad school student? Ideally I'd like a book which starts slowly but gets far, and isn't too basic. However I'm not looking for a text where you need to have done a couple of courses in differential geometry (fibre bundles etc) to get started!
I am looking for a preferably introductory text on Yang-Mills theory with mathematical basis and language. (Differential forms) I have a background in QCD and QED, however, I want to go more in details in geometrical interpretations of Yang-Mills theory. I am sorry if this question has asked before. Thanks in advance.
Is there an expression to indicate the strategy of wearing someone down with numerous small irritations? I would use rope-a-dope, but it's got connotations of pretending to lose that I don't need. I'm trying to describe the behavior of someone who sends twenty detailed emails a day about various projects, and the recipient of his emails has finally gotten tired of trying to parse them, so the recipient just agrees to whatever he proposes. I'd like an expression that evokes both outward earnestness and hidden creepiness, like Uriah Heep, Dickens's "Humble servant" with veiled ambition, who overdoes it with professions of humility until he's in power. Water torture would work, but comes too close to a more racist expression that I'm not comfortable with. How do I start a process from C#? Add Area 51 Meta to the app Automatically detect edit abuse and exclude from badges/flag for mod review has 5 pages of 1 character edits (including an edit to one of my posts), apparently in a massive attempt to earn the Copy Editor badge.  Should Copy Editor, etc., ignore 1 character whitespace-only edits?    If we still want to count minor edits (which may be useful), could we at least detect edit abuse via some secret algorithm? ~20+ one character whitespace-only edits in the course of an hour should at least raise a flag of some sort.    If whitespace character are too hard to count, can we at least assume that 20 non-tag edits in 20 minutes (less than a minute per edit) is a good signal of abuse? The specific algorithm should be secret, obviously, but I think these sorts of edit abuses shouldn't be too difficult to detect. Does Time Machine backup programs like Photoshop and iWork? Change \textwidth after first page in scrlttr2 How can I make my microSD card writable? How to prevent an email from accidentally being forwarded? How to get glare on "Quick Smoke" (Fire & Smoke explosion) Last night I took some night sky shots, and I've noticed that with long exposure times (15s, 30s) the time it took to store the images in the camera memory card (jpeg) took roughly as long?  The actual file size is fairly small at 1 to 3MB per file.  Any idea why this is? Difference between declaring variables before or in loop? I have always wondered if, in general, declaring a throw-away variable before a loop, as opposed to repeatedly inside the loop, makes any (performance) difference?  A (quite pointless) example in Java:  a) declaration before loop:  double intermediateResult; for(int i=0; i &lt; 1000; i++){     intermediateResult = i;     System.out.println(intermediateResult); }   b) declaration (repeatedly) inside loop:  for(int i=0; i &lt; 1000; i++){     double intermediateResult = i;     System.out.println(intermediateResult); }   Which one is better, a or b?   I suspect that repeated variable declaration (example b) creates more overhead in theory, but that compilers are smart enough so that it doesn't matter. Example b has the advantage of being more compact and limiting the scope of the variable to where it is used. Still, I tend to code according example a.  Edit: I am especially interested in the Java case. Does there exists an Isomorphism between $\mathbb{C}^* $ under multiplication with $\mathbb{C}$ under addition.  Attempt In my opinion It does not exists.  If there exists such an isomorphism say $\phi :\mathbb{C}^* \to \mathbb{C}$ then, from the fact that Isomorphism takes identity to identity we have $$\phi \left( 1 \right)=0$$  From the fact      Given $\phi:G \to H$ be an isomorphism, then For a fixed integer $k$ and a fixed group element $b$ in $G$, the   equation $x^k=b$ has the same number of solutions in $G$ as does   the equation $x^k=\phi\left(b\right)$ in $H$.   We have $x^4=1$ and $x^4=0$ must have same number of solutions, but the solutions to these equations are 4 and 1 only. Proof of greatest integer theorem: floor function is well-defined I have to prove that  $$\forall x \in \mathbb{R},\exists !\,n \in \mathbb{Z} \text{ s.t. }n \leq x &lt; n+1\;.$$  where $\exists !\,n $ means there exists a unique (exactly one) $n$. I'm done with proving that there are at least one integers for the solution. I couldn't prove the &quot;uniqueness&quot; of the solution, and so I looked up the internet, and here's what I found:  Let $\hspace{2mm}n,m \in \mathbb{Z} \text{ s.t. }n \leq x &lt; n+1$ and $m \leq x &lt; m+1$. Since $n \leq x \text{ and } -(m+1) &lt; -x$, by adding both, $n + (-m-1) &lt; (x-x) = 0$. And (some steps here) likewise, $(x-x) &lt; n+m+1$.  Now, can I add up inequalities like that, even when the book is about real analysis (and in which assumptions are supposed to be really minimal)? Or should I also prove those addition of inequalities? Thank you :D Full List of inventory items After beating the game, I still have several empty inventory spots.  I most likely missed several items in my addicted frenzy to finish the game.  What are all the items that can be found in the game? And where can they found? "Learn More" link on tags broken in latest Chrome stable Note: This is identical to , but that bug was declined because Chrome 30 was in dev. Chrome 30 has now been released, and still has this issue.   The "Learn More" link for tags is broken in the latest release of Google Chrome.    If I right-click and open in new tab, I get the tag's page, but just clicking doesn't work.  I'm using Chrome 30.0.15599.69, the latest stable release: When should static_cast, dynamic_cast, const_cast and reinterpret_cast be used? What are the proper uses of:   static_cast dynamic_cast const_cast reinterpret_cast C-style cast (type)value Function-style cast type(value)   How does one decide which to use in which specific cases? Too big addon list, what should I do? How expand names and keep it all? Extreme of $\cos A\cos B\cos C$ in a triangle without calculus. If $A,B,C$ are angles of a triangle, find the extreme value of $\cos A\cos B\cos C$.   I have tried using $A+B+C=\pi$, and applying all and any trig formulas, also AM-GM, but nothing  helps.  On this topic we learned also about Cauchy inequality, but I have no experience with it.  The answer according to Mathematica is when $A=B=C=60$.  Any ideas? Bridged interfaces and VLAN tags How can I render an object with an hdr background? I have an object with an hdr for the background. What do I do in Cycles to render the background with my object?  How is this different from an ordinary render in Cycles?  The hdr is a big one, 350MB.