New observations in the BRST analysis of dynamical non-Abelian 2-form gauge theory

TL;DR

This paper extends BRST symmetry analysis to a 4D topologically massive non-Abelian gauge theory with 1-form and 2-form fields, revealing novel features in the symmetry transformations of auxiliary fields.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized BRST framework for a 4D non-Abelian gauge theory with topological coupling, highlighting new non-generative properties of BRST charges for certain fields.

Findings

BRST transformations for auxiliary fields are not generated by BRST charges.

The study reveals differences from BRST applications in other gauge theories.

Novel behavior of symmetry transformations in topologically massive gauge theory.

Abstract

We generalize the usual gauge transformations connected with the 1-form gauge potential to the Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) and anti-BRST symmetry transformations for the four (3+1)-dimensional (4D) topologically massive non-Abelian gauge theory that incorporates the famous (B\wedge F) term where there is an explicit topological coupling between 1-form and 2-form gauge fields. A novel feature of our present investigation is the observation that the (anti-)BRST symmetry transformations for the auxiliary 1-form field (K_\mu) and 2-form gauge potential (B_{0i}) are not generated by the (anti-)BRST charges that are derived by exploiting all the relevant (anti-)BRST symmetry transformations corresponding to all the fields of the present theory. This observation is a new result because it is drastically different from the application of the BRST formalism to (non-)Abelian 1-form and Abelian 2-form as well as 3-form gauge theories.