The local degrees of freedom of higher dimensional pure Chern-Simons theories

Abstract

The canonical structure of higher dimensional pure Chern-Simons theories is analysed. It is shown that these theories have generically a non-vanishing number of local degrees of freedom, even though they are obtained by means of a topological construction. This number of local degrees of freedom is computed as a function of the spacetime dimension and the dimension of the gauge group.

arXiv comment9 pages, RevTeX3.0 (LaTeX2.09), no figures