Determination of Gravitational Counterterms Near Four Dimensions from RG Equations

The finiteness condition of renormalization gives a restriction on the form of the gravitational action. By reconsidering the Hathrell's RG equations for massless QED in curved space, we determine the gravitational counterterms and the conformal anomalies as well near four dimensions. As conjectured for conformal couplings in 1970s, we show that at all orders of the perturbation they can be combined into two forms only: the square of the Weyl tensor in $D$ dimensions and $E_D=G_4 +(D-4)\chi(D)H^2 -4\chi(D) \nabla^2 H$, where $G_4$ is the usual Euler density, $H=R/(D-1)$ is the rescaled scalar curvature and $\chi(D)$ is a finite function of $D$ only. The number of the dimensionless gravitational couplings is also reduced to two. $\chi(D)$ can be determined order by order in series of $D-4$, whose first several coefficients are calculated. It has a universal value of $1/2$ at $D=4$. The familiar ambiguous $\nabla^2 R$ term is fixed. At the $D \to 4$ limit, the conformal anomaly $E_D$ just yields the combination $E_4=G_4-2\nabla^2 R/3$, which induces Riegert's effective action.