When doing calculations in rigid body mechanics, it is necessary to choose an origin to calculate torques and angular momenta. However, the underlying dynamics does not depend upon the choice of that origin. This is very reminiscent of gauge theories. Could we interpret the choice of origins as a gauge fixing? Has gauge formalism been applied to rigid body mechanics?
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$\begingroup$ Perhaps Cartan was the first one to come close to this point, but at that time gauge theories have not been formulated yet. Also, Marsden, Montgomery and Ratiu write about geometric phases in rigid body mechanics and other authors point out the similarity with electromagnetism. There are relatively new articles on this topic but I do not seem to find exactly what I am looking for either - maybe we should write one ourselves.. $\endgroup$– DanailCommented Dec 1, 2017 at 7:22
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