Is there a $C$-function in 4D Quantum Einstein Gravity?

Abstract

We describe a functional renormalization group-based method to search for `$C$-like' functions with properties similar to that in 2D conformal field theory. It exploits the mode counting properties of the effective average action and is particularly suited for theories including quantized gravity. The viability of the approach is demonstrated explicitly in a truncation of 4 dimensional Quantum Einstein Gravity, i.e. asymptotically safe metric gravity.