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Published June 2000 | public
Journal Article

Conformal anomalies revisited: closed form effective actions in D ≥ 4

Deser, S. ORCID icon

Abstract

We present closed-form coordinate invariant effective actions, for both types of Weyl anomalies, in all D ≥ 4 that vary into the respective anomalies and confirm that their nonlocalities match (as they must) the underlying diagrammatics. In particular, despite contrary appearances, generalized Polyakov form type A actions both yield the correct anomalies and reproduce the lowest order pole structure. However, already to lowest order, these actions cannot be obtained from integrating out a physically acceptable local compensating field action. For type B, a previous candidate with the wrong analytic behavior indeed fails to vary properly. Instead, correct type B actions are given that reflects their UV origin and logarithmic scale dependence; they are constructed in terms of novel Weyl invariant tensor operators.

Additional Information

© 2000 Elsevier. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant PHY99-73935.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023