The dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a review with examples

Abstract: Gauge symmetries are a cornerstone of modern physics but they come with technical difficulties when it comes to quantization, to accurately describe particles phenomenology or to extract observables in general. These shortcomings must be met by essentially finding a way to effectively reduce gauge symmetries. We propose a review of a way to do so which we call the dressing field method. We show how the BRST algebra satisfied by gauge fields, encoding their gauge transformations, is modified. We outline noticeable applications of the method, such as the electroweak sector of the Standard Model and the local twistors of Penrose.