Extended antifield formalism Original Research Article

The antifield formalism is extended so as to incorporate the rigid symmetries of a given theory. To that end, it is necessary to introduce global ghosts not only for the given rigid symmetries, but also for all the higher order conservation laws, associated with conserved antisymmetric tensors jμ13μk fulfilling ϖμ1jμ13μk 2~ 0. Otherwise, one may encounter obstructions of the type discussed in by the authors. These higher order conservation laws are shown to define additional rigid symmetries of the master equation and to form — together with the standard symmetries — an interesting algebraic structure. They lead furthermore to independent Ward identities which are derived in the standard manner, because the resulting master (“Zinn-Justin”) equation capturing both the gauge symmetries and the rigid symmetries of all orders takes a known form. Issues such as anomalies or consistent deformations of the action preserving some set of rigid symmetries can be also systematically analysed in this framework.