W gravities, Toda theories and the geometry of the central charge

Nov, 1990
41 pages
Published in:
  • Nucl.Phys.B 364 (1991) 621-661
  • Published: 1991
Report number:
  • QMW-PH-90-14

Citations per year

1991199219931994254
Abstract: (Elsevier)
Classical two-dimensional conformal field theories such as Toda models that are invariant under classical Virasoro or W -algebra symmetries with non-zero central charges are discussed. A naive gauging of such symmetries by coupling to gravity or W -gravity is shown not to work if there are central charges, and two successful ways of gauging are presented. The first is Weyl invariant and requires the introduction of spin-zero fields which can be thought of as gauge fields for gauge transformations generated by the central charges. The second involves, for the Virasoro algebra, a “non-geometric” coupling to all components of the metric and violates Weyl invariance.
  • gravitation: W(N)
  • field theory: Toda
  • field theory: conformal
  • central charge
  • dimension: 2
  • invariance: Weyl
  • quantization: Becchi-Rouet-Stora
  • ghost
  • string model
  • field theory: topological