Noncovariant Gauges in Canonical Formalism [electronic resource] / by André Burnel.

Canonical Quantization for Constrained Systems -- Quantization of the Free Electromagnetic Field in General Class III Linear Gauges -- Quantization of the Free Electromagnetic Field in Class II Axial Gauges -- Gauge Fields in Interaction -- Perturbation Theory: Renormalization and All That -- Slavnov-Taylor Identities for Yang-Mills Theory -- Field Theory Without Infinities -- Gauges with a Singular C Matrix -- Conclusion.

By definition, gauge theories - among the cornerstones of fundamental theoretical physics - involve more degrees of freedom than required by the underlying physics. The unphysical degrees of freedom must be shown not to yield unwarranted effects at every step in the formalism where explicit Lorentz covariance is required. The present work presents, in a rigorous way, a consistent formulation for the handling of noncovariant gauges in the quantization and renormalization of gauge theories. Though the path integral method is very convenient for the proof of unitarity and renormalizability of gauge theories, the canonical formalism is eventually necessary to expose the issues in a self-consistent way. These notes are written as an introduction to postgraduate students, lecturers and researchers in the field and assume prior knowledge of quantum field theory.