A superspace formulation of the BV action

Abstract

We show that the BV (Batalin Vilkovisky) action, formulated with an extended BRST symmetry (including the shift symmetry), is also invariant under an extended anti-BRST transformation (where the antifields are the parameters of the transformation), when the gauge fixing Lagrangian is both BRST and anti-BRST invariant. We show that for a general gauge fixing Lagrangian, the BV action can be written in a manifestly extended BRST invariant manner in a superspace with one Grassmann coordinate whereas it can be expressed in a manifestly extended BRST and anti-BRST invariant manner in a superspace with two Grassmann coordinates when the gauge fixing Lagrangian is invariant under both BRST and anti-BRST transformations.