New results on systems with second-class constraints (Q809437)

The authors derive some new results on the constraint algebra for large classes of mechanical systems with purely second-class constraints (with respect to Dirac's classification). In particular, a subset consisting of half the full set of constraints is shown to have vanishing mutual brackets. The approach is valid for some examples from non-relativistic particle mechanics and relativistic field theory considered at the classical level. The same results hold for the commutators of the constraint operators in the corresponding quantized theories if the commutator anomalies are absent.