The Gravitational Sine-Gordon Model

Abstract

We use matrix model results to investigate the Sine-Gordon model coupled to two dimensional gravity. For relevant (in the RG sense) potentials, we show that the $c=1$ string, which appears in the ultraviolet limit of this model, flows to a set of decoupled $c=0$ (pure gravity) models in the infrared. The torus partition sum, which was argued previously to count the number of string degrees of freedom and hence satisfy a new $c$ -- theorem, is shown to be a monotonically decreasing function of the scale (given by the quantum area of the world-sheet).