Quantum Gauge Theory

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In order to quantize a gauge theory, like for example Yang-Mills theory, Chern-Simons or BF model, one method is to perform a gauge fixing. This is done in the BRST and Batalin-Vilkovisky formulation. Another is to factor out the symmetry by dispensing with vector potentials altogether (they're not physically observable anyway) and work directly with Wilson loops, Wilson lines contracted with other charged fields at its endpoints and spin networks. Older approaches to quantization for Abelian models use the Gupta-Bleuler formalism with a "semi-Hilbert space" with an indefinite sesquilinear form. However, it is much more elegant to just work with the quotient space of vector field configurations by gauge transformations.