2016/09/08 by Pierre J. Clavier, Clavier, Pierre J., Viet Dang Nguyen +1
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #math-ph #math.MP
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1609.02326
11 pages, uses Tikz, to be published in the proceedings of the 2015 Villa de Leyva summer school
arxiv created 2016/09/08 · arxiv updated 2016/09/09
The Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) formalism is a powerful generalization of the BRST approach of gauge theories and allows to treat more general field theories. We will see how, starting from the case of a finite dimensional configuration space, we can see this formalism as a theory of integration for polyvectors over the shifted cotangent bundle of the configuration space, and arrive at a formula that admits a generalization to the infinite dimensional case. The process of gauge fixing and the observables of the theory will be presented.