COORDINATE-FREE QUANTIZATION OF FIRST-CLASS CONSTRAINED SYSTEMS

The coordinate-free formulation of canonical quantization, achieved by a flat-space Brownian motion regularization of phase-space path integ rals, is extended to a special class of closed first-class constrained systems that is broad enough to include Yang-Mills type theories with an arbitrary compact gauge group. Central to this extension are the u se of coherent state path integrals and of Lagrange multiplier integra tions that engender projection operators onto the subspace of gauge in variant states. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.