Structure of Phenomenological Lagrangians. I

The general structure of phenomenological Lagrangian theories is investigated, and the possible transformation laws of the phenomenological fields under a group are discussed. The manifold spanned by the phenomenological fields has a special point, called the origin. Allowed changes in the field variables, which do not change the on-shell S matrix, must leave the origin fixed. By a suitable choice of fields, the transformations induced by the group on the manifold of the phenomenological fields can be made to have standard forms, which are described in detail. The mathematical problem is equivalent to that of finding all (nonlinear) realizations of a (compact, connected, semisimple) Lie group which become linear when restricted to a given subgroup. The relation between linear representations and nonlinear realization is discussed. The important special case of the chiral groups SU (2) (2) and SU (3) (3) is considered in detail.