# Charge of a field under the action of a group

What does it mean for a field (say, $\phi$) to have a charge (say, $Q$) under the action of a group (say, $U(1)$)?

-

## 1 Answer

It means that

1. the charge operator $Q$ is a Lie algebra generator for some Lie group $G$.

2. the field $\phi\in V$ takes values/transform in a representation $V$ of the Lie group. (Note that any Lie group representation $V$ is also Lie algebra representation of the corresponding Lie algebra.)

3. the charge operator $\rho(Q)$ in the representation $\rho: G \to GL(V)$ is proportional to the identity. The proportionality factor/eigenvalue is the actual charge of the field.

To see an example of this, say the (strong) $u(1)$ hypercharge $Y$, see this answer.

-

Thank you, it helped a lot! – John Smith Mar 2 '12 at 16:05
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": true, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 12, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": false, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "github"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "english_confidence": 0.8808901309967041, "perplexity_flag": "head"}