2003/08/23 by Luis Alberto Sanchez, Jorge Mahecha
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th
published as Rev.Mex.Fis. 49 (2003) 364-370 · Latex, 17 pages, in Spanish, accepted for publication in Revista Mexicana de Fisica
arxiv created 2003/08/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Due to the fact that only matter fields have phase, frequently is believed that the gauge principle can induce gauge fields only in quantum systems. But this is not necessary. This paper, of pedagogical scope, presents a classical system constituted by a particle in a classical potential, which is used as a model to illustrate the gauge principle and the spontaneous symmetry breaking. Those concepts appear in the study of second order phase transitions. Ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, plasmons in a free electron gas, and the mass of vector bosons in the gauge field Yang-Mills theories, are some of the phenomena in which these transitions occur.