Noncommuting Electric Fields and Algebraic Consistency in Noncommutative Gauge Theories

We show that noncommuting electric fields occur naturally in θ-expanded noncommutative gauge theories. Using this noncommutativity, which is field dependent, and a hamiltonian generalisation of the Seiberg-Witten map, the algebraic consistency in the lagrangian and hamiltonain formulations of these theories, is established. A comparison of results in different descriptions shows that this generalised map acts as a canonical transformation in the physical subspace only. Finally, we apply the hamiltonian formulation to derive the gauge symmetries of the action. On leave from S.N.Bose Natl. Ctr. for Basic Sciences, Calcutta, India; e-mail:[email protected]; [email protected]