January 26, 2011
We develop the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism for classical field theory on generic globally hyperbolic spacetimes. A crucial aspect of our treatment is the incorporation of the principle of local covariance which amounts to formulate the theory without reference to a distinguished spacetime. In particular, this allows a homological construction of the Poisson algebra of observables in classical gravity. Our methods heavily rely on the differential geometry of configuration spa...
September 20, 1991
The Lagrangian Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) formalism gives the rules for the quantisation of a general class of gauge theories which contain all the theories known up to now. It does, however, not only give a recipe to obtain a gauge fixed action, but also gives a nice understanding of the mechanism behind gauge fixing. It moreover brings together a lot of previous knowledge and recipes in one main concept~: the canonical transformations. We explain the essentials of this formali...
January 17, 2002
Differential geometric formulation of quantum gauge theory of gravity is studied in this paper. The quantum gauge theory of gravity which is proposed in the references hep-th/0109145 and hep-th/0112062 is formulated completely in the framework of traditional quantum field theory. In order to study the relationship between quantum gauge theory of gravity and traditional quantum gravity which is formulated in curved space, it is important to find the differential geometric form...
March 22, 2016
Perturbative algebraic quantum field theory (pAQFT) is a mathematically rigorous framework that allows to construct models of quantum field theories on a general class of Lorentzian manifolds. Recently this idea has been applied also to perturbative quantum gravity, treated as an effective theory. The difficulty was to find the right notion of observables that would in an appropriate sense be diffeomorphism invariant. In this article I will outline a general framework that al...
January 9, 2003
We consider the two-dimensional model of W3-gravity within Lagrangian quantization methods for general gauge theories. We use the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism to study the arbitrariness in the realization of the gauge algebra. We obtain a one-parametric non-analytic extension of the gauge algebra, and a corresponding solution of the classical master equation, related via an anticanonical transformation to a solution corresponding to an analytic realization. We investigate the...
April 29, 2020
This paper is mainly based on the talk I presented at the meeting "The Philosophy and Physics of Noether's Theorems" that took place 5-6 October 2018, but it also contains some original results that were inspired by discussions with mathematicians, physicists and philosophers about the problem of understanding the intrinsic meaning of gauge invariance. In this work, I argue that following the principles of locality, deformation and homology, one naturally ends up using the Ba...
April 3, 2000
This is an introduction to quantum gravity, aimed at a fairly general audience and concentrating on what have historically two main approaches to quantum gravity: the covariant and canonical programs (string theory is not covered). The quantization of gravity is discussed by analogy with the quantization of the electromagnetic field. The conceptual and technical problems of both approaches are discussed, and the paper concludes with a discussion of evidence for quantum gravit...
December 9, 2001
The quantum gravity is formulated based on principle of local gauge invariance. The model discussed in this paper has local gravitational gauge symmetry and gravitational field is represented by gauge field. In leading order approximation, it gives out classical Newton's theory of gravity. It can also give out Einstein's field equation with cosmological constant. For classical tests, it gives out the same theoretical predictions as those of general relativity. This quantum ga...
October 13, 1997
We consider two-dimensional gravity with dynamical torsion in the Batalin - Vilkovisky and Batalin - Lavrov - Tyutin formalisms of gauge theories quantization as well as in the background field method.
December 2, 2008
The Batalin-Vilkovisky method (BV) is the most powerful method to analyze functional integrals with (infinite-dimensional) gauge symmetries presently known. It has been invented to fix gauges associated with symmetries that do not close off-shell. Homological Perturbation Theory is introduced and used to develop the integration theory behind BV and to describe the BV quantization of a Lagrangian system with symmetries. Localization (illustrated in terms of Duistermaat-Heckman...