Conformal Invariance in Classical Field Theory

Abstract

A geometric generalization of first-order Lagrangian formalism is used to analyse a conformal field theory for an arbitrary primary field. We require that global conformal transformations are Noetherian symmetries and we prove that the action functional can be taken strictly invariant with respect to these transformations. In other words, there does not exists a "Chern-Simons" type Lagrangian for a conformally invariant Lagrangian theory.