Energy-Momentum and Gauge Conservation Laws

Abstract

We treat energy-momentum conservation laws as particular gauge conservation laws when generators of gauge transformations are horizontal vector fields on fibre bundles. In particular, the generators of general covariant transformations are the canonical horizontal prolongations of vector fields on a world manifold. This is the case of the energy-momentum conservation laws in gravitation theories. We find that, in main gravitational models, the corresponding energy-momentum flows reduce to the generalized Komar superpotential. We show that the superpotential form of a conserved flow is the common property of gauge conservation laws if generators of gauge transformations depend on derivatives of gauge parameters. At the same time, dependence of conserved flows on gauge parameters make gauge conservation laws form-invariant under gauge transformations.