Local BRST cohomology in the antifield formalism. II: Application to Yang-Mills theory (Q1903334)

[For part I, see the preceding review.] The paper is the second part of two part study of the local cohomology of the BRST differential \(s\). The general results obtained in the companion paper are here applied to an explicit computation of the local \(s\)-cohomology modulo the exterior spacetime derivative \(H^k (s\mid d)\) for the Yang-Mills models with compact gauge group coupled to matter fields. The authors give a constructive procedure for building representatives of cohomological classes in arbitrary spacetime dimension and for each value of the ghost degree. In contrast to the \(s\)-cohomology case, in the cohomology modulo \(d\) there exist cocycles necessarily depending on antifields. However, the new antifield depending solutions to the consistency conditions for the semisimple gauge group are not present in the ghost sector number equaling zero or one. The paper consists of fourteen sections. After the preliminary discussion of the BRST differential, homological perturbation theory, cohomology of the longitudinal exterior derivative along the gauge orbits and the invariant cohomology of \(d\), there is presented the invariant cohomology of \(\delta\) (Koszul-Tate differential) modulo \(d\). The last tool is used to show a general method of calculating the \(H^* (s\mid d)\). The paper finishes with the discussion of some classes of the cocycle solutions and the \(x\)-dependent solutions. The results show the effectiveness of the approach exploiting the resolution of the stationary surface through the Koszul-Tate differential by means of antifields.