A Superspace Formulation of the BV Action for Higher Derivative Gauge Theories

TL;DR

This paper develops a superspace BV formalism for higher derivative gauge theories, demonstrating their extended BRST invariance and on-shell anti-BRST invariance, thus advancing the understanding of their symmetry structures.

Contribution

It introduces a superspace BV formulation for higher derivative gauge theories, highlighting their extended BRST and anti-BRST symmetries and clarifying their invariance properties.

Findings

Theories exhibit extended BRST invariance in superspace.

Anti-BRST invariance holds only on-shell.

Superspace formalism simplifies symmetry analysis.

Abstract

In this paper we analyse a certain type of higher derivative gauge theories which are known to possess BRST symmetry associated with their higher derivative structure. We first show that these theories are also invariant under a anti-BRST symmetry and a double BRST symmetry. We then discuss the invariance of these theories under shift symmetry in the superspace Batalin Vilkovisky (BV) formalism. We show that these theories are manifestly extended BRST invariant. However they are only extended anti-BRST invariant on-shell.