Gauge Freedom in Path Integrals in Abelian Gauge Theory

Abstract

We extend gauge symmetry of Abelian gauge field to incorporate quantum gauge degrees of freedom. We twice apply the Harada--Tsutsui gauge recovery procedure to gauge-fixed theories. First, starting from the Faddeev--Popov path integral in the Landau gauge, we recover the gauge symmetry by introducing an additional field as an extended gauge degree of freedom. Fixing the extended gauge symmetry by the usual Faddeev--Popov procedure, we obtain the theory of Type I gaugeon formalism. Next, applying the same procedure to the resulting gauge-fixed theory, we obtain a theory equivalent to the extended Type I gaugeon formalism.