Inequivalent Quantizations of Yang-Mills Theory on a Cylinder

Abstract

Yang-Mills theories on a 1+1 dimensional cylinder are considered. It is shown that canonical quantization can proceed following different routes, leading to inequivalent quantizations. The problem of the non-free action of the gauge group on the configuration space is also discussed. In particular we re-examine the relationship between ``$\theta$-states" and the fundamental group of the configuration space. It is shown that this relationship does or does not hold depending on whether or not the gauge transformations not connected to the identity act freely on the space of connections modulo connected gauge transformations.