GAUGE TRANSFORMATIONS IN DIRAC THEORY OF CONSTRAINED SYSTEMS

According to Dirac's prescription the generator of gauge transformations for a constrained system endowed with primary and secondary first class constraints is constructed as a linear combination of all these (first class) constraints. Using the total Hamiltonian to generate the dynamics of the system it is shown that the time evolution of the coefficients of the secondary constraints in the generator of gauge transformations is not independent but is determined by the coefficients of the primary constraints. This result is applied to some physically interesting systems. © 1990 American Institute of Physics.