Geometrical BRST Quantization of Gauged Nonlinear Sigma Models: Killing Fields and Physical Cohomology

Abstract

We construct an off-shell BRST-invariant gauge-fixed formulation of a nonlinear sigma model coupled to a non-Abelian gauge field. Starting from the dynamics of GBs and their consistent couplings to gauge and ghost fields, we construct the corresponding BRST-invariant quantum theory and provide a geometrical interpretation in terms of Killing vectors. A central point of our treatment is that the Lie-bracket closure of the target-space Killing vectors provides the geometric realization of the algebra entering the BRST differential. The physical state space is characterized by the cohomology of the nilpotent BRST charge, providing a consistent separation of physical and non-physical degrees of freedom. We explicitly derive the BRST charge and present the associated symmetry transformations. Finally, we analyze the structure of the physical Hilbert space and discuss the conditions under which BRST symmetry supports unitarity and constrains the quantum effective theory. Quantum statements are conditional on a BRST-preserving measure and regulator, and the four-dimensional model is treated as an effective field theory.