Liouville Lost, Liouville Regained: Central Charge in a Dynamical Background

Abstract

Several recent approaches to black hole entropy obtain the density of states from the central charge of a Liouville theory. If Liouville theory is coupled to a dynamical spacetime background, however, the classical central charge vanishes. I show that the central charge can be restored by introducing appropriate constraints, which may be interpreted as fall-off conditions at a boundary such as a black hole horizon.