Gauge transformations with fractional winding numbers

The role which gauge transformations of noninteger winding numbers might play in non-Abelian gauge theories is studied. The phase factor acquired by the semiclassical physical states in an arbitrary background gauge field when they undergo a gauge transformation of an arbitrary real winding number is calculated in the path integral formalism assuming that a θFF term added to the Lagrangian plays the same role as in the case of integer winding numbers. Requiring that these states provide a representation of the group of open-quote open-quote large close-quote close-quote gauge transformations, a condition on the allowed backgrounds is obtained. It is shown that this representability condition is only satisfied in the monopole sector of a spontaneously broken gauge theory, but not in the vacuum sector of an unbroken or a spontaneously broken non-Abelian gauge theory. It is further shown that the recent proof of the vanishing of the θ parameter when gauge transformations of arbitrary fractional winding numbers are allowed breaks down in precisely those cases where the representability condition is obeyed because certain gauge transformations needed for the proof, and whose existence is assumed, are either spontaneously broken or cannot be globally defined as a result of a topological obstruction. copyright 1996 The American Physical Society