In Becker, Becker and Schwarz, the point particle action is given in terms of an auxiliary field e(τ) as: ˜S0=12∫dτ(e−1˙X2−m2e)
It is then shown that under infinitesimal reparametrizations of τ, the action is unchanged. This allows us to pick a gauge, in particular e(τ)=1.
I'm not sure I'm understanding this right, but I have a few issues with this.
Doesn't this assume that e takes the value 1 somewhere?
Although ˜S0 (sorry, not e(τ)) may be reparametrization invariant, I don't see how you could pick a reparametrization that can leave e constant. Such a reparametrization τ′(τ) would need to map all τ to a constant, but then dτ′dτ=0, which can't be the case.
Invariance is only under infinitesimal transformations. This is related to 2: how do we know that an infinitesimal reparametrisation could make e constant?
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