Fiber Bundles and Connections

Abstract

The elegance of the geometrical expression of physical ideas has attracted much attention ever since Einstein proposed his geometrical theory of gravity in 1916. Such an expression was, however, confined to the general theory of relativity until the 1970s when the language of geometry was found to be most suitable, not only for gravity, but also for the other three fundamental forces of nature. Geometry, in the form of gauge field theories of electroweak and strong interactions, has been successful not only in creating a model—the so-called standard model—that explains all experimental results to remarkable accuracy, but also in providing a common language for describing all fundamental forces of nature, and with that a hope for unifying these forces into a single all-embracing force. This hope is encouraged by the successful unification of electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force through the medium of geometry and gauge field theory.