Canonical Structure of Field Theories with Boundaries and Applications to Gauge Theories

Abstract: In this paper, we present a review of the canonical structure of field theories defined on manifolds with time-like boundaries. The notion of differentiable generator is shown to be a requirement coming from the consistency of the symplectic structure. We show how this structure can be applied to classify the possible boundary conditions of a general gauge theory. We then review the definition and properties of surface charges. We show how the notion of differentiable generators allows the direct computation of the phase-space of boundary gauge degrees of freedom.