Linearized Form of the Generic Affine-Virasoro Action
Abstract
Halpern and Yamron have given a Lorentz, conformal, and Diff S2-invariant world-sheet action for the generic irrational conformal field theory, but the action is highly non-linear. In this paper, we introduce auxiliary fields to find an equivalent linearized form of the action, which shows in a very clear way that the generic affine-Virasoro action is a Diff S2-gauged WZW model. In particular, the auxiliary fields transform under Diff S2 as local Lie g × Lie g connections, so that the linearized affine-Virasoro action bears an intriguing resemblance to the usual (Lie algebra) gauged WZW model.
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