‘‘Theory of theories’’ approach to string theory

We propose a new formulation of gauge theories as a quantum theory which has the gauge theory action S as its dynamical variable. This system is described by a simple actional I(S) (that is, an action for the action S) whose equation of motion gives the Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) master equation for S. Upon quantization we find that our new formulation is reduced to something like a topological field theory having a BRST exact gauge-fixed actional. Therefore the present formulation can reproduce ordinary gauge theories since the path integral over S is dominated by the classical configuration which satisfies the BV master equation. This ‘‘theory of theories’’ formulation is intended to be applied to closed string field theory.