The BRST quantization of massive abelian two-form gauge fields

Abstract

Massive abelian two-form gauge fields are quantized in the framework of the antifield BRST formalism based on path integrals. In this letter it is shown that transforming the original system into i) a first-class one in the initial phase-space, or ii) a reducible family of first-class systems in a larger phase-space, and further quantizing in the BRST manner the resulting first-class systems, their correspondent path integrals coincide with the original one. The procedure is then generalized to the case of massive abelian ϱ-form abelian gauge fields in D dimensions.