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The Metric on the Space of Yang-Mills Configurations

A distance function on the set of physical equivalence classes of Yang-Mills configurations considered by Feynman and by Atiyah, Hitchin and Singer is studied for both the $2+1$ and $3+1$-dimensional Hamiltonians. This set equipped with this distance function is a metric space, and in fact a Riemannian manifold as Singer observed. Furthermore, this manifold is complete. Gauge configurations can be used to parametrize the manifold. The metric tensor without gauge fixing has zero eigenvalues, but is free of ambiguities on the entire manifold. In $2+1$ dimensions the problem of finding the distance from any configuration to a pure gauge configuration is an integrable system of two-dimensional differential equations. A calculus of manifolds with singular metric tensors is developed and the Riemann curvature is calculated using this calculus. The Laplacian on Yang-Mills wave functionals has a slightly different form from that claimed earlier. In $3+1$-dimensions there are field configurations an arbitrarily large distance from a pure gauge configuration with arbitrarily small potential energy. These configurations resemble long-wavelength gluons. Reasons why there nevertheless can be a mass gap in the quantum theory are proposed.