Slavnov-Taylor Identities from the Causal Point of View

Abstract

We continue the investigation of quantized Yang-Mills theories coupled to matter fields in the framework of causal perturbation theory which goes back to Epstein and Glaser. In this approach gauge invariance is expressed by a simple commutator relation for the S-matrix and the corresponding gauge transformations are simple transformations of the free fields only. In spite of this simplicity, gauge invariance implies the usual Slavnov-Taylor identities. The main purpose of this paper is to prove the latter statement. Since the Slavnov-Taylor identities are formulated in terms of Green's functions, we investigate the agreement of two perturbative definitions of Green's functions, namely of Epstein and Glaser's definition with the Gell-Mann Low series.