Batalin-Vilkovisky Formalism in Perturbative Algebraic Quantum Field Theory

On the basis of a thorough discussion of the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism for classical field theory presented in our previous publication, we construct in this paper the Batalin-Vilkovisky complex in perturbatively renormalized quantum field theory. The crucial technical ingredient is an extended notion of the renormalized time-ordered product as a binary product equivalent to the pointwise product of classical field theory. Originally, in causal perturbation theory, the time-ordered product is understood merely as a sequence of multilinear maps on the space of local functionals. Our extended notion of the renormalized time-ordered product (denoted by ) is consistent with the old one and we found a subspace of the quantum algebra which is closed with respect to . On this space the renormalized Batalin-Vilkovisky algebra is then the classical algebra but written in terms of the time-ordered product, together with an operator which replaces the ill defined graded Laplacian of the unrenormalized theory. We identify it with the anomaly term of the anomalous Master Ward Identity of Brennecke and Dutsch. Contrary to other approaches we do not refer to the path integral formalism and do not need to use regularizations in intermediate steps.