Topological field theories in n-dimensional spacetimes and Cartan's equations
- Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 70-543, Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico)
- Departamento de Fisica, Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Instituto Politecnico Nacional 2508, San Pedro Zacatenco, 07360, Gustavo A. Madero, Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico)
Action principles of the BF type for diffeomorphism invariant topological field theories living in n-dimensional spacetime manifolds are presented. Their construction is inspired by Cuesta and Montesinos' recent paper where Cartan's first and second structure equations together with first and second Bianchi identities are treated as the equations of motion for a field theory. In opposition to that paper, the current approach involves also auxiliary fields and holds for arbitrary n-dimensional spacetimes. Dirac's canonical analysis for the actions is detailedly carried out in the generic case and it is shown that these action principles define topological field theories, as mentioned. The current formalism is a generic framework to construct geometric theories with local degrees of freedom by introducing additional constraints on the various fields involved that destroy the topological character of the original theory. The latter idea is implemented in two-dimensional spacetimes where gravity coupled to matter fields is constructed out, which has indeed local excitations.
- OSTI ID:
- 21254127
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 78, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.78.064046; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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