Static sources in classical Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

We examine initial-time Yang-Mills field configurations which satisfy Gauss's law in the presence of static external sources. We show that if such a configuration is an extremum of the energy, then it is a static solution of the Yang-Mills equations. Next we consider Yang-Mills field configurations which satisfy Gauss's law for one external point source. We show that there exists a large class of such configurations which have lower energy than the Coulomb solution.