Embedding Space Approach to JT Gravity

Abstract

We present a coordinate-free background space construction of Euclidean Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. It is written as a gauge theory that utilizes the Killing vectors and conformal Killing vectors of a hyperboloid embedded in a three dimensional background. A novel feature of the gauge theory is that vanishing field strength does not necessarily imply that the gauge potentials are pure gauges, not even locally. As is usual, metric tensors are dynamically generated from the classical solutions of the theory, which here do not rely on coordinate charts on the two-dimensional surface. We find a special class of solutions whereby the derived metric tensor on the surface is the induced metric from the background space. The gauge theory construction given here has a natural generalization to a non-commutative space, which does not require the use of coordinates, symbols or a star product.