Related papers: A note on quantum Hamiltonian reduction and anomal…
We generalise Langlois' Hamiltonian treatment of gauge-invariant linear cosmological perturbations to a cosmological setting with multiple scalar fields minimally coupled to gravity. We review the Hamilton-Jacobi-like technique for a…
Based on a more careful canonical analysis, we motivate a reduced quantization - in the sense of superspace quantization - of slightly inhomogeneous cosmology in place of the Dirac quantization in the existing literature, and provide it in…
We reexamine a unitary-transformation method of extracting a physical Hamiltonian from a gauge field theory after quantizing all degrees of freedom including redundant variables. We show that this {\it quantum Hamiltonian reduction} method…
We consider quantum mechanics on constrained surfaces which have non-Euclidean metrics and variable Gaussian curvature. The old controversy about the ambiguities involving terms in the Hamiltonian of order hbar^2 multiplying the Gaussian…
We explore the connection between the global symmetry quantum numbers of line defects and 't Hooft anomalies. Relative to local (point) operators, line defects may transform projectively under both internal and spacetime symmetries. This…
We study the deformation quantisation (Moyal quantisation) of general constrained Hamiltonian systems. It is shown how second class constraints can be turned into first class quantum constraints. This is illustrated by the O(N) non-linear…
In hep-th/0411028 a new manifestly covariant canonical quantization method was developed. The idea is to quantize in the phase space of arbitrary histories first, and impose dynamics as first-class constraints afterwards. The Hamiltonian is…
We discuss hidden symmetries of three-dimensional field configurations revealed at the one-particle level by the use of pseudoclassical particle models. We argue that at the quantum field theory level, these can be naturally explained in…
We study quantum field theories in which the number of degrees of freedom changes discontinuously across the momentum space. This discontinuity which we call "Kronecker anomaly" leads to non-local effective actions and can be represented as…
Commutator anomalies obstruct solving the Wheeler-DeWitt constraint equation in Dirac quantization of quantum gravity-matter theory. When the obstruction is removed, there result quantal modifications to the constraints. The same classical…
In this work, we propose a cohomological approach to studying perturbative anomalies in quantum mechanics. The Hamiltonian $\hat{H}$ together with the symmetry generator $\hat{S}$ forms a unitary representation of the two-dimensional…
The quantum action principle of renormalisation theory is applied to the antibracket-antifield formalism for Hamiltonian systems. General results on the local BRST cohomology allow one to prove that the anomalies appear in the time…
Over the past five years, there has been significant progress on the problem of quantization of diffeomorphism covariant field theories with {\it local} degrees of freedom. The absence of a background space-time metric in these theories…
It is customary to couple a quantum system to external classical fields. One application is to couple the global symmetries of the system (including the Poincar\'{e} symmetry) to background gauge fields (and a metric for the Poincar\'{e}…
All five-dimensional non-abelian gauge theories have a $U(1)_I$ global symmetry associated with instantonic particles. We describe an obstruction to coupling $U(1)_I$ to a classical background gauge field that occurs whenever the theory has…
We introduce a framework for internal topological symmetries in quantum field theory, including "noninvertible symmetries" and "categorical symmetries". This leads to a calculus of topological defects which takes full advantage of…
Combining quantum and Bayesian principles leads to optimality in metrology, but the optimisation equations involved are often hard to solve. This work mitigates this problem with a novel class of measurement strategies for quantities…
We argue that the finiteness of quantum gravity amplitudes in fully compactified theories (at least in supersymmetric cases) leads to a bottom-up prediction for the existence of non-trivial dualities. In particular, finiteness requires the…
We discuss the quantization of theories which are formulated using compensating fields. In particular, we discuss the relation between the components formulation and the superspace formulation of supergravity theories. The requirement that…
We develop a proposal by Freed to see anomalous field theories as relative field theories, namely field theories taking value in a field theory in one dimension higher, the anomaly field theory. We show that when the anomaly field theory is…