Frame Covariant Formalism for Fermionic Theories
Abstract
We present a frame- and reparametrisation-invariant formalism for quantum field theories that include fermionic degrees of freedom. We achieve this using methods of field-space covariance and the Vilkovisky-DeWitt (VDW) effective action. We explicitly construct a field-space supermanifold on which the quantum fields act as coordinates. We show how to define field-space tensors on this supermanifold from the classical action that are covariant under field reparametrisations. We then employ these tensors to equip the field-space supermanifold with a metric, thus solving a long-standing problem concerning the proper definition of a metric for fermionic theories. With the metric thus defined, we use well-established field-space techniques to extend the VDW effective action and express any fermionic theory in a frame- and field-reparametrisation-invariant manner.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2006.05831,
title = {Frame Covariant Formalism for Fermionic Theories},
author = {Kieran Finn and Sotirios Karamitsos and Apostolos Pilaftsis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.05831},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
31 pages, errors due to a mismatch of conventions eliminated