High Energy Theory Seminar

https://caltech.zoom.us/j/795527605 meeting ID 795 527 605 from the Zoom app

The Hamiltonian formulation of mechanics has many advantages,but its standard presentation destroys manifest covariance.  This can be avoided by using the "covariant phase formalism" of Iyer and Wald, but
until recently this formalism has suffered from several ambiguities related to boundary terms and total derivatives.  In this talk I will present a new version of the formalism which incorporates boundary
effects from the beginning. This eliminates all ambiguities, and leads to an algorithmic procedure for covariantly constracting the phase space and Hamiltonian of any Lagrangian field theory.  It also allows us to
confirm that the Poisson bracket in covariant phase space is indeed equivalent to an old proposal of Peierls for computing Poisson brackets covariantly.  Along the way I'll illustrate the formalism using various
examples.  Based on work with Jie-qiang Wu.