The Electromagnetic and Proca Fields Revisited: a Unified Quantization

Quantizing the electromagnetic field with a group formalism faces the difficulty of how to turn the traditional gauge transformation of the vector potential, Aμ(x) → Aμ(x) + ∂μϕ(x), into a group law. In this paper it is shown that the problem can be solved by looking at gauge transformations in a sl...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Aldaya Valverde, Víctor, Navarro, Miguel, Calixto Molina, Manuel
Formato: artículo
Fecha de publicación:1997
País:España
Recursos:Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena(UPCT)
Repositorio:Repositorio Digital UPCT
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.upct.es:10317/513
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10317/513
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Campos electromagnéticos Proca
Cuantización unificada
Matemática Aplicada
Descrição
Resumo:Quantizing the electromagnetic field with a group formalism faces the difficulty of how to turn the traditional gauge transformation of the vector potential, Aμ(x) → Aμ(x) + ∂μϕ(x), into a group law. In this paper it is shown that the problem can be solved by looking at gauge transformations in a slightly different manner which, in addition, does not require introducing any BRST-like parameter. This gauge transformation does not appear explicitly in the group law of the symmetry but rather as the trajectories associated with generalized equations of motion generated by vector fields with null Noether invariants. In the new approach the parameters of the local group, U(1)(~x, t), acquire dynamical content outside the photon mass shell, a fact which also allows a unified quantization of both the electromagnetic and Proca fields.