Related papers: A diffeomorphism anomaly in every dimension
Consider a bundle of circles passing through 0 in 4-dimensional space. It is said to be rectifiable if there is a germ of diffeomorphism at 0 that takes all circles from our bundle to straight lines. We will give a classification of all…
Gravitational axial and chiral anomalies in a noncommutative space are examined through the explicit perturbative computation of one-loop diagrams in various dimensions. The analysis depend on how gravity is coupled to noncommutative matter…
We show that matching anomalies under large gauge transformations and large diffeomorphisms can explain the appearance and non-renormalization of couplings in effective field theory. We focus on thermal effective field theory where we argue…
Conformally-invariant and pure, scale-invariant theories of gravity are particularly interesting in four or higher dimensions. Yet, in contrast to their four-dimensional counterparts, theories in higher dimensions are significantly more…
We present two different aspects of the anomalies in quantum field theory. One is the dispersion relation aspect, the other is differential geometry where we derive the Stora--Zumino chain of descent equations.
We address the role of large diffeomorphisms in Witten's 2+1 gravity on the manifold ${\bf R} \times T^2$. In a ``spacelike sector" quantum theory that treats the large diffeomorphisms as a symmetry, rather than as gauge, the Hilbert space…
Recently a scale invariant theory of gravity was constructed by imposing a conformal symmetry on general relativity. The imposition of this symmetry changed the configuration space from superspace - the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics…
In the present paper, we revisit gravitational theories which are invariant under TDiffs -- transverse (volume preserving) diffeomorphisms and global scale transformations. It is known that these theories can be rewritten in an equivalent…
In three spacetime dimensions, general relativity drastically simplifies, becoming a ``topological'' theory with no propagating local degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, many of the difficult conceptual problems of quantizing gravity are…
Several approaches to the dynamics of loop quantum gravity involve discretizing the equations of motion. The resulting discrete theories are known to be problematic since the first class algebra of constraints of the continuum theory…
The gauge symmetry of classical general relativity under space-time diffeomorphisms implies that any path integral quantization which can be interpreted as a sum over space-time geometries, gives rise to a formal invariant of smooth…
Diffeomorphism invariance is often considered to be a hallmark of the theory of general relativity (GR). But closer analysis reveals that this cannot be what makes GR distinctive. The concept of diffeomorphism invariance can be defined in…
In general relativity, the masslessness of gravitons can be traced to symmetry under diffeomorphisms. Here we consider another possibility, whereby the masslessness arises from spontaneous violation of Lorentz symmetry.
We study field diffeomorphisms $\Phi(x)= F(\rho(x))=a_0\rho(x)+a_1\rho^2(x)+\ldots=\sum_{j+0}^\infty a_j \rho^{j+1}$, for free and interacting quantum fields $\Phi$. We find that the theory is invariant under such diffeomorphisms if and…
The study of general two dimensional models of gravity allows to tackle basic questions of quantum gravity, bypassing important technical complications which make the treatment in higher dimensions difficult. As the physically important…
We study 't Hooft anomalies for discrete global symmetries in bosonic theories in 2, 3 and 4 dimensions. We show that such anomalies may arise in gauge theories with topological terms in the action, if the total symmetry group is a…
We argue that the presence of conformal anomalies in gravitational theories can lead to observable modifications to Einstein's equations via the induced anomalous effective actions, whose non-localities can overwhelm the smallness of the…
We describe an infinite-dimensional algebra of hidden symmetries for the self-dual gravity equations. Besides the known diffeomorphism-type symmetries (affine extension of w(infinity) algebra), this algebra contains new hidden symmetries,…
We first consider M-theory formulated on an open eleven-dimensional spin-manifold. There is then a potential anomaly under gauge transformations on the E_8 bundle that is defined over the boundary and also under diffeomorphisms of the…
We present evidence that there is a 4D model that satisfies the conditions of renormalizability and diffeomorphism invariance simultaneously at the 2-loop level. The traceless mode is treated perturbatively, while the conformal mode can be…