CHERN-SIMONS STATES AND TOPOLOGICALLY MASSIVE GAUGE-THEORIES

In an abelian topologically massive gauge theory, any eigenstate of th e Hamiltonian can be decomposed into a factor describing massive propa gating gauge bosons and a Chern-Simons wave function describing a set of nonpropagating ''topological'' excitations. The energy depends only on the propagating modes, and energy eigenstates thus occur with a de generacy that can be parametrized by the Hilbert space of the pure Che rn-Simons theory. We show that for a nonabelian topologically massive gauge theory, this degeneracy is lifted: although the Gauss law constr aint can be solved with a similar factorization, the Hamiltonian coupl es the propagating and nonpropagating (topological) modes.