BV equivalence with boundary

TL;DR

This paper extends the concept of BV-BFV equivalence to theories with boundaries, demonstrating strict and lax equivalences among various formulations of Yang--Mills, classical mechanics, and gravity, with implications for quantization.

Contribution

It introduces a refined notion of BV-BFV equivalence, distinguishing strict and lax types, and applies this to show equivalences among different formulations of gauge theories and mechanics.

Findings

Strict BV-BFV theories of Yang--Mills are pairwise equivalent.

Lax BV-BFV theories of classical mechanics are equivalent with isomorphic BV cohomologies.

Strict BV-BFV equivalence is a finer classification than lax equivalence.

Abstract

An extension of the notion of classical equivalence of equivalence in the Batalin--(Fradkin)--Vilkovisky (BV) and (BFV) framework for local Lagrangian field theory on manifolds possibly with boundary is discussed. Equivalence is phrased in both a strict and a lax sense, distinguished by the compatibility between the BV data for a field theory and its boundary BFV data, necessary for quantisation. In this context, the first- and second-order formulations of non-Abelian Yang--Mills and of classical mechanics on curved backgrounds, all of which admit a strict BV-BFV description, are shown to be pairwise equivalent as strict BV-BFV theories. This in particular implies that their BV-complexes are quasi-isomorphic. Furthermore, Jacobi theory and one-dimensional gravity coupled with scalar matter are compared as classically-equivalent reparametrisation-invariant versions of classical mechanics, but such that only the latter admits a strict BV-BFV formulation. They are shown to be equivalent as lax BV-BFV theories and to have isomorphic BV cohomologies. This shows that strict BV-BFV equivalence is a strictly finer notion of equivalence of theories.