2013/07/08 by Enrique Alvarez, Enrique Alarcón Álvarez, Alvarez, Enrique +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1307.2060
6 pages, to be published in the proceedings of "Windows on the universe" (Rencontres du Vietnam, 2013)
openalex publication_date 2013/07/08 · arxiv created 2013/11/13 · arxiv updated 2013/11/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A Weyl invariant extension of Einstein gravity is studied. It simply consists in the group averaging of Einstein's action under Weyl transformations. Contradicting cherished beliefs, a conformal anomaly is found in the trace of the equations of motion if diffeomorphism invariance is to be a symmetry of the quantum theory. This anomaly however vanishes on shell, which signals the existence of another gauge in which the anomaly is absent. It can be made also to vanish off-shell at the price of losing diffeomorphism invariance