Noether identities need not be independent, but satisfy first-stage Noether identities, which are subject to the second-stage Noether identities and so on. Higher-stage Noether identities also are separated into the trivial and non-trivial once. A degenerate Lagrangian is called reducible if there exist non-trivial higher-stage Noether identities. Yang–Mills gauge theory and gauge gravitation theory exemplify irreducible Lagrangian field theories.