A Quantum Anomaly For Rigid Particles

Abstract

Canonical quantisation of rigid particles is considered paying special attention to the restriction on phase space due to causal propagation. A mixed Lorentz-gravitational anomaly is found in the commutator of Lorentz boosts with world-line reparametrisations. The subspace of gauge invariant physical states is therefore not invariant under Lorentz transformations. The analysis applies for an arbitrary extrinsic curvature dependence with the exception of only one case to be studied separately. Consequences for rigid strings are also discussed.