English

Manifestly diffeomorphism invariant classical Exact Renormalization Group

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-06-08 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We construct a manifestly diffeomorphism invariant Wilsonian (Exact) Renormalization Group for classical gravity, and begin the construction for quantum gravity. We demonstrate that the effective action can be computed without gauge fixing the diffeomorphism invariance, and also without introducing a background space-time. We compute classical contributions both within a background-independent framework and by perturbing around a fixed background, and verify that the results are equivalent. We derive the exact Ward identities for actions and kernels and verify consistency. We formulate two forms of the flow equation corresponding to the two choices of classical fixed-point: the Gaussian fixed point, and the scale invariant interacting fixed point using curvature-squared terms. We suggest how this programme may completed to a fully quantum construction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.08993,
  title  = {Manifestly diffeomorphism invariant classical Exact Renormalization Group},
  author = {Tim R. Morris and Anthony W. H. Preston},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.08993},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

50 pages, 2 figures, minor typos fixed, minor additions to the Discussion, one reference added

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:59:57.688Z