Weak Dirac bracket construction and the superparticle covariant quantization problem Original Research Article

The general procedure for constructing a consistent covariant Dirac-type bracket for the models with mixed first and second class constraints is presented. The proposed scheme essentially relies upon explicit separation of the initial constraints into infinitely reducible first and second class ones (by making use of some covariant projectors). Reducibility of the second class constraints involved manifests itself in weakening some properties of the bracket as compared to the standard Dirac one. In particular, a commutation of any quantity with the second class constraints and the Jacobi identity holds on the second class constraints surface only. The procedure developed is realized for a N = 1 Brink-Schwarz superparticle in arbitrary dimension and for a N = 1, D = 9 massive superparticle with the Wess-Zumino term. The possibility to apply the bracket for quantizing the superparticles within the framework of the recent unified algebra approach by Batalin and Tyutin [20–22] is examined. It is shown, in particular, that for a D = 9 massive superparticle it is impossible to construct a Dirac-type bracket possessing a (strong) Jacobi identity in a full phase space.