The Maxwell–Einstein system, Ward identities and the Vilkovisky construction Original Research Article

The gauge fixing dependence of the one-loop effective action of quantum gravity in the proper-time representation is investigated for a space of arbitrary curvature, and the investigation is extended to Maxwell–Einstein theory. The construction of Vilkovisky and DeWitt for removal of this dependence is then considered in general gauges, and it is shown that nontrivial criteria arising from a Ward identity of the theory must be obeyed by the regularization scheme, if the construction is to remove the gauge dependence of quadratic and quartic divergences. The results apply also to non-Abelian gauge theories; they are used to address the question of gauge dependence of asymptotic freedom arising through internal graviton lines at one-loop order as suggested by Robinson and Wilczek.