Superfield BRST Charge and the Master Action

TL;DR

This paper introduces a superfield approach to extended phase space that simplifies deriving the BV master action and BRST charges, connecting classical master equations with superspace methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel superfield formulation that directly yields the BV master action and nilpotent BRST charges from classical solutions.

Findings

Superfield formulation leads to BV master action on phase space.

Superspace construction produces nilpotent BRST charges.

Clarifies relation between classical master equations and superspace methods.

Abstract

Using a superfield formulation of extended phase space, we propose a new form of the Hamiltonian action functional. A remarkable feature of this construction is that it directly leads to the BV master action on phase space. Conversely, superspace can be used to construct nilpotent BRST charges directly from solutions to the classical Lagrangian Master Equation. We comment on the relation between these constructions and the specific master action proposal of Alexandrov, Kontsevich, Schwarz and Zaboronsky.