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Wigner was happy to hear this from me in 1985, but asked me why there are two degrees of freedom for gauge transformations. We then struggled. We noted that E(2) can beregarded as the symmetry on the tangential plane on the north pole of a sphere with as large radius. We can then a tangenial cylinder around the equatorial belt. For this cylinder, there is a rotational degree of freedom corresponding to the photo helicity, and one up-down translational freedom corresponding to the up-down translation. We also noted that both translational E(2) freedoms collapse into one up-down movement along the cylinder. We published the result in 1987.
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