Chern-Simons Field Theories in the Coulomb Gauge

Abstract

In this talk some recent results in the quantization of Chern-Simons field theories in the Coulomb gauge will be presented. In the first part, the consistency of the Chern-Simons field theories in this gauge is proven using the Dirac's canonical formalism for constrained systems. Despite the presence of non-trivial self-interactions in the gauge fixed functional, it will be shown that the commutation relations between the fields are trivial at any perturbative order in the absence of couplings with matter fields. If these couplings are present, instead, the commutation relations become rather involved, but it is still possible to study their main properties and to show that they vanish at the tree level. In the second part of the talk the perturbative aspects of Chern-Simons field theories in the Coulomb gauge will be analysed. In particular, it will be shown by explicit computations and in a regularization independent way that there are no radiative contributions to the $n-$point correlation functions. Finally the Feynman rules in the Coulomb gauge will be derived on a three dimensional manifold with a spatial section given by a closed and orientable Riemann surface.