Charge (physics)

Physics property associated with symmetries

In physics, a charge is any of many different quantities, such as the electric charge in electromagnetism or the color charge in quantum chromodynamics. Charges correspond to the time invariant generators of a symmetry group, and specifically, to the generators that commute with the Hamiltonian. Charges are often denoted by , and so the invariance of the charge corresponds to the vanishing commutator , where is the Hamiltonian. Thus, charges are associated with conserved quantum numbers; these are the eigenvalues of the generator .

Abstractly, a charge is any generator of a continuous symmetry of the physical system under study. When a physical system has a symmetry of some sort, Noether's theorem implies the existence of a conserved current. The thing that "flows" in the current is the "charge", the charge is the generator of the (local) symmetry group. This charge is sometimes called the Noether charge. Thus, for example, the electric charge is the generator of the U(1) symmetry of electromagnetism. The conserved current is the electric current. In the case of local, dynamical symmetries, associated with every charge is a gauge field; when quantized, the gauge field becomes a gauge boson. The charges of the theory "radiate" the gauge field. Thus, for example, the gauge field of electromagnetism is the electromagnetic field; and the gauge boson is the photon. The word "charge" is often used as a synonym for both the generator of a symmetry, and the conserved quantum number (eigenvalue) of the generator. Thus, letting the upper case letter Q refer to the generator, one has that the generator commutes with the Hamiltonian [Q, H] = 0. Commutation implies that the eigenvalues (lower case) q are time invariant: = 0. So, for example, when the symmetry group is a Lie group, then the charge operators correspond to the simple roots of the root system of the Lie algebra; the discreteness of the root system accounting for the quantization of the charge. The simple roots are used, as all the other roots can be obtained as linear combinations of these. The general roots are often called raising and lowering operators, or ladder operators. The charge quantum numbers then correspond to the weights of the highest weight modules of a given representation of the Lie algebra. So, for example, when a particle in a quantum field theory belongs to a symmetry, then it transforms according to a particular representation of that symmetry; the charge quantum number is then the weight of the representation.