Perturbative renormalization and BRST
The perturbative quantization of gauge theories is shortly reviewed with emphasis of the local operator BRST-formalism.
arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Michael Duetsch.
The perturbative quantization of gauge theories is shortly reviewed with emphasis of the local operator BRST-formalism.
In the framework of perturbative quantum field theory a new, universal renormalization condition (called Master Ward Identity) was recently proposed by one of us (M.D.) in a joint paper with F.-M. Boas. The main aim of the present paper is to get a better understanding of the Master Ward Identity by analyzing its meaning in classical field theory. It turns out that it is the most general identity for classical local fields which follows from the field equations. It is equivalent to a generalization of the Schwinger-Dyson Equation and is closely related to the Quantum Action Principle of Lowenstein and Lam. As a byproduct we give a self-contained treatment of Peierls' manifestly covariant definition of the Poisson bracket.
A perturbative formulation of algebraic field theory is presented, both for the classical and for the quantum case, and it is shown that the relation between them may be understood in terms of deformation quantization.
We show that the requirements of renormalizability and physical consistency imposed on perturbative interactions of massive vector mesons fix the theory essentially uniquely. In particular physical consistency demands the presence of at least one additional physical degree of freedom which was not part of the originally required physical particle content. In its simplest realization (probably the only one) these are scalar fields as envisaged by Higgs but in the present formulation without the ``symmetry-breaking Higgs condensate''. The final result agrees precisely with the usual quantization of a classical gauge theory by means of the Higgs mechanism. Our method proves an old conjecture of Cornwall, Levin and Tiktopoulos stating that the renormalization and consistency requirements of spin=1 particles lead to the gauge theory structure (i.e. a kind of inverse of 't Hooft's famous renormalizability proof in quantized gauge theories) which was based on the on-shell unitarity of the $S$-matrix. We also speculate on a possible future ghostfree formulation which avoids ''field coordinates'' altogether and is expected to reconcile the on-shell S-matrix point of view with the off-shell field theory structure.
We continue the investigation of quantized Yang-Mills theories coupled to matter fields in the framework of causal perturbation theory which goes back to Epstein and Glaser. In this approach gauge invariance is expressed by a simple commutator relation for the S-matrix and the corresponding gauge transformations are simple transformations of the free fields only. In spite of this simplicity, gauge invariance implies the usual Slavnov-Taylor identities. The main purpose of this paper is to prove the latter statement. Since the Slavnov-Taylor identities are formulated in terms of Green's functions, we investigate the agreement of two perturbative definitions of Green's functions, namely of Epstein and Glaser's definition with the Gell-Mann Low series.
We consider quantized Yang-Mills theories in the framework of causal perturbation theory which goes back to Epstein and Glaser. In this approach gauge invariance is expressed by a simple commutator relation for the S-matrix. The most general coupling which is gauge invariant in first order contains a two-parametric ambiguity in the ghost sector - a divergence- and a coboundary-coupling may be added. We prove (not completely) that the higher orders with these two additional couplings are gauge invariant, too. Moreover we show that the ambiguities of the n-point distributions restricted to the physical subspace are only a sum of divergences (in the sense of vector analysis). It turns out that the theory without divergence- and coboundary-coupling is the most simple one in a quite technical sense. The proofs for the n-point distributions containing coboundary-couplings are given up to third or fourth order only, whereas the statements about the divergence-coupling are proven in all orders.
A simple general proof of gauge invariance in QED is given in the framework of causal perturbation theory. It illustrates a method which can also be used in non-abelian gauge theories.