Supergravity Coupled to Chiral Matter at One Loop

Abstract

We extend earlier calculations of the one-loop contributions to the effective bose Lagrangian in supergravity coupled to chiral matter. We evaluate all logarithmically divergent contributions for arbitrary background scalar fields and space-time metric. We show that, with a judicious choice of gauge fixing and of the definition of the action expansion, much of the result can be absorbed into a redefinition of the metric and a renormalization of the K\"ahler potential. Most of the remaining terms depend on the curvature of the K\"ahler metric. Further simplification occurs in models obtained from superstrings in which the K\"ahler Riemann tensor is covariantly constant.