HAMILTONIAN-FORMULATION OF JACKIW-PI 3-DIMENSIONAL GAUGE-THEORIES

A three-dimensional non-Abelian gauge theory was proposed by Jackiw an d Pi to create mass for the gauge fields. However, the quadratic actio n obtained by switching off the non-Abelian interactions possesses mor e gauge symmetries than the original one, causing some difficulties in quantization. Jackiw and Pi proposed another action by introducing ne w fields, whose gauge symmetries are consistent with the quadratic par t. It is shown that all of these theories have the same number of phys ical degrees of freedom in the Hamiltonian framework. Hence, as far as the physical states are considered, there is no inconsistency. Nevert heless, perturbation expansion is still problematic. To rectify this w e propose to modify one of the constraints of the non-Abelian theory w ithout altering its canonical Hamiltonian nor the number of physical s tates.