Geometrical effective action and Wilsonian flows

Abstract

A gauge invariant flow equation is derived by applying a Wilsonian momentum cut-off to gauge invariant field variables. The construction makes use of the geometrical effective action for gauge theories in the Vilkovisky-DeWitt framework. The approach leads to modified Nielsen identities that pose non-trivial constraints on consistent truncations. We also evaluate the relation of the present approach to gauge fixed formulations as well as discussing possible applications.