Operation “SPRING”

Lieut.-General Guy Granville Simonds wrote this account of Operation “SPRING” in response to a statement written for the Minister of National Defence by the Official Historian C.P. Stacey. The statement was based on a detailed study of the battle which Stacey completed in late 1945

Revisiting the Fradkin-Vilkovisky Theorem

The status of the usual statement of the Fradkin-Vilkovisky theorem, claiming complete independence of the Batalin-Fradkin-Vilkovisky path integral on the gauge fixing "fermion" even within a nonperturbative context, is critically reassessed. Basic, but subtle reasons why this statement cannot apply as such in a nonperturbative quantisation of gauge invariant theories are clearly identified. A criterion for admissibility within a general class of gauge fixing conditions is provided for a large ensemble of simple gauge invariant systems. This criterion confirms the conclusions of previous counter-examples to the usual statement of the Fradkin-Vilkovisky theorem.Comment: 21 pages, no figures, to appear in Jnl. Phys.