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GR from RG, 2D example: Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity induced from renormalization group flow

M. M. Sheikh-Jabbari1,* and V. Taghiloo1,2,†

  • *Contact author: jabbari@theory.ipm.ac.ir
  • †Contact author: v.taghiloo@iasbs.ac.ir
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 066009 – Published 15 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7yr1-bd1m

Abstract

We demonstrate how the two-dimensional gravity emerges within the “general relativity (GR) from renormalization group (RG)” program initiated in Refs. [1,2]. To achieve this, we consider a generic 2D conformal field theory (CFT) with a 3D holographic description, which we assume to be well described by pure Einstein-anti–de Sitter3 gravity in the bulk. We study the holographic RG flow for the 2D CFT action and show that the RG corrected action at an arbitrary energy scale contains a 2D scalar-tensor gravity theory. In the simplest case, the flow induces Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity, where the bulk radial lapse function seeds the dynamical dilaton field of the JT gravity. We show that the standard TT¯ deformation of the 2D CFT is recovered as a special case in the Fefferman-Graham limit where the lapse is fixed. We further establish the robustness of the RG-induced gravity picture by verifying its consistency under holographic renormalization and by generalizing the result to a one-parameter family of boundary conditions. Our results provide a first-principles derivation of the JT gravity at a finite cutoff as an intrinsic manifestation of the holographic RG flow in a non-Fefferman-Graham gauge.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 066009– Published 15 September, 2026
  • Received 14 June 2026
  • Accepted 24 August 2026
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