Dilaton invading from infinitesimal extra dimension

Abstract

We show that the Wess-Zumino action for the spontaneously broken Weyl (or conformal) symmetry, a.k.a dilaton effective action, in even $D$ dimensions can be obtained from the Kaluza-Klein dimensional reduction of the Lovelock action in $D+\epsilon$ dimensions by taking the $\epsilon \to 0$ limit, where the dilaton is identified with the metric in the extra dimension. The construction gives an explicit form of the dilaton effective action in any even dimensions.