Covariant Quantisation in the Antifield Formalism

Abstract

In this thesis we give an overview of the antifield formalism and show how it must be used to quantise arbitrary gauge theories. The formalism is further developed and illustrated in several examples, including Yang-Mills theory, chiral $W_3$ and $W_{2,5/2}$ gravity, strings in curved backgrounds and topological field theories. All these models are characterised by their gauge algebra, which can be open, reducible, or even infinitly reducible. We show in detail how to perform the gauge fixing and how to compute the anomalies using Pauli-Villars regularisation and the heat kernel method. Finally, we discuss the geometrical structure of the antifield formalism.