Hamiltonian treatment of self-dual antisymmetric tensors

Self-dual antisymmetric tensors occur in certain (4n + 2)-dimensional supergravity models, in particular the one connected to type IIB superstrings. So far they have been quantized only using light front methods. Here we show that the existing covariant action for such fields leads to a consistent hamiltonian system also for ordinary “timelike” dynamics, although rather complicated second class constraints are present.