Consistent anomalies of the induced W gravities

Abstract

The BRST anomaly which may be present in the induced $W_n$ gravity quantized on the light-cone is evaluated in the geometrical framework of Zucchini. The cocycles linked by the cohomology of the BRST operator to the anomaly are straightforwardly calculated thanks to the analogy between this formulation and the Yang-Mills theory. We give also a conformally covariant formulation of these quantities including the anomaly, which is valid on arbitrary Riemann surfaces. The example of the $W_3$ theory is discussed and a comparison with other candidates for the anomaly available in the literature is presented.