Master canonical action and BRST charge of the M-theory bosonic five-brane

A complete analysis of the canonical structure for a gauge fixed PST bosoni c five-brane action is performed. This canonical formulation is quadratic i n the dependence on the antisymmetric field and it has second class constra ints. We remove the second class constraints and a master canonical action with only first class constraints is proposed. The nilpotent BRST charge an d its BRST invariant effective theory is constructed. The construction does not assume the existence of the inverse of the induced metric. Singular co nfigurations are then physical ones. We obtain the physical Hamiltonian of the theory and analyze its stability properties. Finally, by studying the a lgebra of diffeomorphisms we find under mild assumptions the general struct ure for the Hamiltonian constraint for theories invariant under six-dimensi onal diffeomorphisms and we give an algebraic characterization of the const raint associated with the bosonic five-brane action. We also identify the c onstraint for the bosonic five-brane action upgraded with a cosmological te rm, it contains a Born-Infeld type term. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Sci ence B.V.