PHASE-SPACE REDUCTION AND THE CHOICE OF PHYSICAL VARIABLES IN GAUGE-THEORIES

The connection between the way of separation of physical variables and the form of the Hamiltonian path integral (HPI) is studied for the Yang-Mills quantum mechanics. It is shown that physical degrees of freedom are always described by curvilinear coordinates. It is also found that the ambiguity in determining physical variables follows from the reduction of the physical phase space. The latter leads to a modification of the standard HPI (HPI with gauge conditions).