``Theory of Theories'' Approach to String Theory

Abstract

We propose a new formulation of gauge theories as a quantum theory which has the gauge theory action $S$ as its dynamical variable. This system is described by a simple actional $I(S)$ (that is, an action for the action $S$) whose equation of motion gives the Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) master equation for $S$. Upon quantization we find that our new formulation is reduced to something like a topological field theory having a BRST exact gauge-fixed actional. Therefore the present formulation can reproduce ordinary gauge theories since the path-integral over $S$ is dominated by the classical configuration which satisfies the BV master equation. This ``theory of theories'' formulation is intended to be applied to closed string field theory.

20 pages, LaTeX, KUNS-1212

References in corpus (6)

• Introduction to string field theory
• Closed String Field Theory: Quantum Action and the BV Master Equation
• On Background Independent Open-String Field Theory
• Geometry of Batalin-Vilkovisky quantization
• A Proof of Local Background Independence of Classical Closed String Field Theory
• Developing the Covariant Batalin-Vilkovisky approach to String Theory

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Small Scale Structure of Space-Time: A Bibliographical Review
• Off-shell Gauge Fields from BRST Quantization