Feynman Rules for Electromagnetic and Yang-Mills Fields from the Gauge-Independent Field-Theoretic Formalism

Abstract

The Feynman rules for the Yang-Mills field, originally derived by Feynman and DeWitt from $S$-matrix theory and the tree theorem, are here derived as a consequence of field theory. Our starting point is the gauge-independent, path-dependent formalism which we proposed earlier. The path-dependent Green's functions in this theory are expressed in terms of auxiliary, path-independent Green's functions in such a way that the path-dependence equation is automatically satisfied. The formula relating the path-dependent to the auxiliary Green's functions is similar to the classical formula relating the path-dependent field variables to the potentials. By using a notation similar but not identical to Schwinger's functional notation, the infinite set of equations satisfied by the Green's function can be replaced by a single equation. When the equation for the auxiliary Green's functions of electromagnetism is solved in a perturbation series, the usual Feynman rules result. For the Yang-Mills field, however, one obtains extra terms; such terms correspond precisely to the closed loops of fictitious scalar particles introduced by Feynman, DeWitt, and Faddeev and Popov.