From BFV to BV and spacetime covariance

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between BFV and BV formulations of gauge theories, demonstrating how to restore spacetime covariance in BV theories derived from BFV using an improved procedure.

Contribution

It provides an explicit example in two dimensions and introduces an adapted method to achieve spacetime covariance in BV formulations from BFV data.

Findings

Original BFV to BV conversion often lacks covariance.

An improved procedure restores spacetime covariance.

Explicit 2D example illustrates the method.

Abstract

The BFV formulation of a given gauge theory is usually significantly easier to obtain than its BV formulation. Grigoriev and Damgaard introduced simple formulas for obtaining the latter from the former. Since BFV relies on the Hamiltonian version of the gauge theory, however, it does not come as a surprise that in general the resulting BV theory does not exhibit space-time covariance. We provide an explicit example of this phenomenon in two spacetime dimensions and show how to restore covariance of the BV data by improving the Grigoriev--Damgaard procedure with appropriate adaptations of its original formulas.