REMARKS CONCERNING THE GEOMETRIES OF GRAVITY AND GAUGE FIELDS

Abstract

An important limitation is shown in the analogy between the Aharonov-Bohm effect and the parallel transport on a cone. It illustrates a basic difference between gravity and gauge fields due to the existence of the solder form for the space-time geometry. This difference is further shown by the observability of the gravitational phase for open paths. This reinforces a previous suggestion that the fundamental variables for quantizing the gravitational field are the solder form and the connection, and not the metric.