Conformal Anomaly and Off-Shell Extensions of Gravity

Abstract

The gauge dependence of the conformal anomaly for spin 3/2 and spin 2 fields in non-conformal supergravities has been a long standing puzzle. In this Letter we argue that the `correct' gauge choice is the one that follows from requiring all terms that would imply a violation of the Wess-Zumino consistency condition to be absent in the counterterm, because otherwise the usual link between the anomaly and the one-loop divergence becomes invalid. Remarkably, the `good' choice of gauge is the one that confirms our previous result that a complete cancellation of conformal anomalies in D=4 can only be achieved for N-extended (Poincaré) supergravities with $N\ge 5$.

References in corpus (4)

• Enhanced Ultraviolet Cancellations in N = 5 Supergravity at Four Loop
• Absence of U(1) Anomalous Superamplitudes in $\mathcal{N}\ge 5$ Supergravities
• Conformal Anomalies and Gravitational Waves
• Cancellation of Conformal and Chiral Anomalies in $N\ge 5$ supergravities

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Conformal Anomaly for Non-Conformal Scalar Fields
• Universal definition of the non-conformal trace anomaly
• Finite Action Principle and Horava-Lifshitz Gravity: early universe, black holes and wormholes
• A rederivation of the conformal anomaly for spin-1/2
• Asymptotic safety and quantum gravity amplitudes