Natural Symmetries of the Yang-Mills Equations

Abstract

We define a natural generalized symmetry of the Yang-Mills equations as an infinitesimal transformation of the Yang-Mills field, built in a local, gauge invariant, and Poincar\'e invariant fashion from the Yang-Mills field strength and its derivatives to any order, which maps solutions of the field equations to other solutions. On the jet bundle of Yang-Mills connections we introduce a spinorial coordinate system that is adapted to the solution subspace defined by the Yang-Mills equations. In terms of this coordinate system the complete classification of natural symmetries is carried out in a straightforward manner. We find that all natural symmetries of the Yang-Mills equations stem from the gauge transformations admitted by the equations.