Gravitational Actions in Two Dimensions and the Mabuchi Functional

Abstract

The Mabuchi energy is an interesting geometric functional on the space of K\"ahler metrics that plays a crucial r\^ole in the study of the geometry of K\"ahler manifolds. We show that this functional, as well as other related geometric actions, contribute to the effective gravitational action when a massive scalar field is coupled to gravity in two dimensions in a small mass expansion. This yields new theories of two-dimensional quantum gravity generalizing the standard Liouville models.