New insights into abelian topologically massive gauge theories

Abstract

Abelian topologically massive gauge theories (TMGT) provide a topological mechanism to generate mass for any p-tensor boson in any dimension. Within the Hamiltonian formulation, the embedded topological field theory (TFT) is not made manifest. We therefore introduce a gauge invariant factorization of the classical phase space in two orthogonal sectors. The first of these sectors is that of gauge invariant dynamical variables with massive excitations. The second is that of a decoupled TFT. Through canonical quantization, a factorization of quantum states arises, enabling the projection from TMGT onto topological quantum field theories in a most transparent way.

To appear in the Proceedings of the IV Summer School in Modern Mathematical Physics, 3-14 September 2006, Belgrade, Serbia, 8 pages