The Maurer-Cartan structure of BRST differentials
- Department of Mathematics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-8205 (United States)
In this paper, we construct a sequence of generators of the BRST complex and reformulate the BRST differential so that it acts on elements of the complex much like the Maurer-Cartan differential acts on left-invariant forms. Thus our BRST differential is formally analogous to the differential defined on the BRST formulation of the Chevalley-Eilenberg cochain complex of a Lie algebra. Moreover, for an important class of physical theories, we show that in fact the differential is a Chevalley-Eilenberg differential. As one of the applications of our formalism, we show that the BRST differential provides a mechanism which permits us to extend a nonintegrable system of vector fields on a manifold to an integrable system on an extended manifold.
- OSTI ID:
- 20699202
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Mathematical Physics, Vol. 46, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.1904708; (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0022-2488
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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