Quantization of Constrained Systems

TL;DR

This paper reviews a projection-operator approach to quantize constrained systems, emphasizing a path-integral method that avoids common ambiguities and auxiliary variables, applicable to various types of constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantization procedure for constrained systems using path integrals with specific measures, eliminating the need for gauge fixing, delta functionals, and auxiliary variables.

Findings

Unified treatment of first- and second-class constraints

Elimination of gauge fixing and auxiliary variables

Application to reparameterization invariant models

Abstract

The present article is primarily a review of the projection-operator approach to quantize systems with constraints. We study the quantization of systems with general first- and second-class constraints from the point of view of coherent-state, phase-space path integration, and show that all such cases may be treated, within the original classical phase space, by using suitable path-integral measures for the Lagrange multipliers which ensure that the quantum system satisfies the appropriate quantum constraint conditions. Unlike conventional methods, our procedures involve no $\delta$-functionals of the classical constraints, no need for dynamical gauge fixing of first-class constraints nor any average thereover, no need to eliminate second-class constraints, no potentially ambiguous determinants, as well as no need to add auxiliary dynamical variables expanding the phase space beyond its original classical formulation, including no ghosts. Besides several pedagogical examples, we also study: (i) the quantization procedure for reparameterization invariant models, (ii) systems for which the original set of Lagrange mutipliers are elevated to the status of dynamical variables and used to define an extended dynamical system which is completed with the addition of suitable conjugates and new sets of constraints and their associated Lagrange multipliers, (iii) special examples of alternative but equivalent formulations of given first-class constraints, as well as (iv) a comparison of both regular and irregular constraints.