A remark on the Lagrange structure of the unfolded field theory

Abstract

Any local field theory can be equivalently reformulated in the so-called unfolded form. General unfolded equations are non-Lagrangian even though the original theory is Lagrangian. Using the theory of a scalar field as a basic example, the concept of Lagrange anchor is applied to perform a consistent path-integral quantization of unfolded dynamics. It is shown that the unfolded representation for the canonical Lagrange anchor of the d'Alembert equation inevitably involves an infinite number of space-time derivatives.