We study spacetime diffeomorphisms in Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formalisms
of generally covariant systems. We show that the gauge group for such a system
is characterized by having generators which are projectable under the Legendre
map. The gauge group is found to be much larger than the original group of
spacetime diffeomorphisms, since its generators must depend on the lapse
function and shift vector of the spacetime metric in a given coordinate patch.
Our results are generalizations of earlier results by Salisbury and
Sundermeyer. They arise in a natural way from using the requirement of
equivalence between Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of the system, and
they are new in that the symmetries are realized on the full set of phase space
variables. The generators are displayed explicitly and are applied to the
relativistic string and to general relativity.Comment: 12 pages, no figures; REVTeX; uses multicol,fancyheadings,eqsecnum;
to appear in Phys. Rev.
