Revisiting the relaxation of constraints in gauge theories

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Golovnev, Alexey, Russkov, Kirill
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Golovnev, Alexey
Russkov, Kirill
author_facet Golovnev, Alexey
Russkov, Kirill
contents Recently, there were works claiming that path integral quantisation of gauge theories necessarily requires relaxation of Lagrangian constraints. As has also been noted in the literature, it is of course wrong since there perfectly exist gauge field quantisations respecting the constraints, and at the same time the very idea of changing the classical theory in this way has many times appeared in other works. On the other hand, what was done in the path integral approach is fixing a gauge in terms of zero-momentum variables. We would like to show that this relaxation is what normally happens when one fixes such a gauge at the level of action principle in a Lagrangian theory. Moreover, there is an interesting analogy to be drawn. Namely, one of the ways to quantise a gauge theory is to build an extended Hamiltonian and then add new conditions by hand such as to make it a second class system. The constraints' relaxation occurs when one does the same at the level of the total Hamiltonian, i.e. a second class system with the primary constraints only.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_02468
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Revisiting the relaxation of constraints in gauge theories
Golovnev, Alexey
Russkov, Kirill
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Mathematical Physics
Quantum Physics
Recently, there were works claiming that path integral quantisation of gauge theories necessarily requires relaxation of Lagrangian constraints. As has also been noted in the literature, it is of course wrong since there perfectly exist gauge field quantisations respecting the constraints, and at the same time the very idea of changing the classical theory in this way has many times appeared in other works. On the other hand, what was done in the path integral approach is fixing a gauge in terms of zero-momentum variables. We would like to show that this relaxation is what normally happens when one fixes such a gauge at the level of action principle in a Lagrangian theory. Moreover, there is an interesting analogy to be drawn. Namely, one of the ways to quantise a gauge theory is to build an extended Hamiltonian and then add new conditions by hand such as to make it a second class system. The constraints' relaxation occurs when one does the same at the level of the total Hamiltonian, i.e. a second class system with the primary constraints only.
title Revisiting the relaxation of constraints in gauge theories
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Mathematical Physics
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02468