Weakly-Coupled Trace Anomaly Action for Gravity
Abstract
We discuss a local, diff-invariant quantum effective action for gravity that captures the trace anomaly via a counter-term. We discuss why this counter-term is the most significant among infinitely many possible ones, and show how the counter-term leads to a scattering amplitude that is strongly coupled at arbitrarily low energies. We show how the introduction of a new sector with spontaneously broken scale invariance removes the strong coupling problem, and discuss some physical consequences due to the new sector. Three Appendices summarize quantum effective actions -- highlighting connections between their local, and seemingly non-local formulations -- for the scale anomaly in 4D QED, for the axial anomaly in 2D QED, and for the scale anomaly in a 2D sigma model.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.11397,
title = {Weakly-Coupled Trace Anomaly Action for Gravity},
author = {Gregory Gabadadze and Giorgi Tukhashvili},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.11397},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
20 pages. To appear in the Valery Rubakov Memorial Volume