G. Gaeta , P. Morando Reducible connections in gauge theories (28K, Plain TeX) ABSTRACT. When studying gauge theories (e.g. with finite energy conditions), attention is traditionally reserved to the subset of irreducible connections, which is open and dense in the full space of connections. We point out that in general the residual set of reducible connections contains critical points of the gauge functionals, which moreover are in general the only ones common to all theories with a given symmetry, i.e. those determined by the symmetry and the geometry of the problem alone, and not by the specific choice of the functional.