Induced Gravity from the Consistent String Theory Coupled with Two - Dimensional Quantum Gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores a unified string and two-dimensional quantum gravity theory with a focus on induced gravity, analyzing its classical and quantum properties, symmetries, and renormalization behavior across different formulations.

Contribution

It introduces three classically equivalent formulations of the unified theory and examines their quantum invariance and renormalization, highlighting the role of generalized symmetries and reparametrizations.

Findings

The theory exhibits invariance under generalized symmetry transformations.

One-loop counterterms are computed and shown to be equivalent on mass-shell.

Different formulations lead to identical quantum contributions on-shell.

Abstract

The unified theory of string and two-dimensional quantum gravity is considered. The action for two-dimensional gravity is choosen in a well-known induced form and thus gravity posesses it's oun nontrivial dynamics even on the classical level. Three classically equivalent forms of the action of the unified theory are described, that is $D$, $D+1$ and $D+2$ formulations where the last one corresponds to the special kind of nonlinear sigma model on the background of classical two-dimensional metric. In all cases we find the action of the theory to be invariant under generalized symmetry transformations, and point out the arbitrariness of renormalization which reflects this symmetry. The one - loop counterterms are calculated in a general covariant gauge and also in conformal gauge. The difference between the counterterms for all classically equivalent variants of the theory is trivial on mass-shell. Since the different versions of the theory lead to the one-loop contributions which coincide on mass shell, the corresponding arbitrariness is related with the only generalized reparametrizations of the theory. Hence one can formulate the conditions of Weyl symmetry for any equivalent form of the action. Such a conditions are written for the $D+2$ formulation and then are reduced to other ones. The equations for the background interaction fields differ from the ones in standard approach and look much more complicated.