Nonequivalent Seiberg–Witten maps for noncommutative massive U(N) gauge theory

Abstract Massive vector fields can be described in a gauge invariant way with the introduction of compensating fields. In the unitary gauge one recovers the original formulation. Although this gauging mechanism can be extended to noncommutative spaces in a straightforward way, nontrivial aspects show up when we consider the Seiberg–Witten map. As we show here, only a particular class of its solutions leads to an action that admits the unitary gauge fixing.