1998/10/01 by Christofer Cronstrom, Cronstrom, Christofer
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/9810003
13 pages 1 sentence changed, 1 misprint corrected
arxiv created 1998/10/13 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
I consider the problem of defining canonical coordinates and momenta in pure Yang-Mills theory, under the condition that Gauss' law is identically satisifed. This involves among other things particular boundary conditions for certain dependent variables. These boundary conditions are not postulated a priori, but arise as consistency conditions related to the equations of motion. It is shown that the theory indeed has a canonical structure, provided one uses a special gauge condition, which is a natural generalisation to Yang-Mills theory of the Coulomb gauge condition in electrodynamics. The canonical variables and Hamiltonian are explicitly constructed. Quantisation of the theory is briefly discussed.