Canonical quantization of four- and five-dimensional U(1) gauge theories

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Abstract
We discuss the canonical quantization of an interacting massless U(1) gauge field using a bosonic gauge-fixing method. We present a way to make the transformation between the Lorentz and the Coulomb gauge of such theories, without using an explicit representation of the fields in terms of creation-annihilation operators. We demonstrate this method in the case of Maxwell photons interacting with Schrödinger electrons and then we treat, with the same methods, a system of higher-dimensional equations appearing in the framework of a manifestly covariant relativistic quantum theory. The nonrelativistic limit of the Coulomb term for such a theory is discussed and compared to the Fokker action appearing in the Wheeler-Feynman action-at-a-distance theory for electromagnetic interactions.