Consequences of Yang-Mills and Mass Gap?

erkant

What are the consequences of a possible solution to Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem? Are the consequences only physical or they will also have applications to other branches of science or life? If yes, what are they?

tom.stoer

are you referring to the millenium problem http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Yang-Mills_Theory/

erkant

Yes, I'm referring to the Millennium Problem.

tom.stoer

I don't think that there are any new physical consequences. We already see asymptotic freedom, color confinement, chiral symmetry breaking; we are able to calculate hadron masses, form factoprs etc. on the lattice with < 5% deviation theor. - exp.

What's missing is a rigorous mathematical definition (or at least a proof of existence) of quantized non-abelian gauge theories and a rigorous derivation of the results. Confinement is still purely understood, most calculations are done numerically, ...

That's why it's a mathematical millenium problem ;-)

erkant

Thanks for your opinion tom.stoer. I was thinking the same thing, but I was just curious whether it was going to have applications to other branches of science or it will be purely mathematical.