Abstract
Once we put a quantum field theory on a curved manifold, it is natural to further assume that coupling constants are position-dependent. The position-dependent coupling constants then provide an extra contribution to the Weyl anomaly so that we may attempt to cancel the entire Weyl anomaly on the curved manifold. We show that such a cancellation is possible for constant Weyl transformation or infinitesimal but generic Weyl transformation in two- and four-dimensional conformal field theories with exactly marginal deformations. When the Weyl scaling factor is annihilated by conformal powers of Laplacian (e.g., by the Fradkin-Tseytlin-Riegert-Paneitz operator in four dimensions), the cancellation persists even at the finite order thanks to a nice mathematical property of the curvature under the Weyl transformation.
- Received 21 December 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.045008
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society