On gravitational dressing of 2D field theories in chiral gauge Original Research Article

After giving a pedagogical review of the chiral gauge approach to 2D gravity, with particular emphasis on the derivation of the gravitational Ward identities, we discuss in some detail the interpretation of matter correlation functions coupled to gravity in chiral gauge. We argue that in chiral gauge no explicit gravitational dressing factor, analogue to the Lionville exponential in conformal gauge, is necessary for left-right symmetric matter operators. In particular, we examine the gravitationally dressed four-point correlation function of products of left and right fermions. We solve the corresponding gravitational Ward identity exactly: in the presence of gravity this four-point function exhibits a logarithmic short-distance singularity, instead of the power-law singularity in the absence of gravity. This rather surprising effect is non-perturbative in the gravitational coupling and is a sign for logarithms in the gravitationally dressed operator product expansions. We also discuss some perturbative evidence that the chiral Gross-Neveu model may remain integrable when coupled to gravity.