English

Note on Weyl versus Conformal Invariance in Field Theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-01-17 v3

Abstract

It was argued recently that conformal invariance in flat spacetime implies Weyl invariance in a general curved background for unitary theories and possible anomalies in the Weyl variation of scalar operators are identified. We argue that generically unitarity alone is not sufficient for a conformal field theory to be Weyl invariant. Furthermore, we show explicitly that when a unitary conformal field theory couples to gravity in a Weyl invariant way, each primary scalar operator that is either relevant or marginal in the unitary conformal field theory corresponds to a Weyl-covariant operator in the curved background.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1704.05210,
  title  = {Note on Weyl versus Conformal Invariance in Field Theory},
  author = {Feng Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.05210},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

10 pages, v3: version to appear in EPJC

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:19:44.756Z