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  • Open Access

Quantum gravity and matter fields in a general background gauge

J. Frenkel*

S. Martins-Filho†

  • *Contact author: jfrenkel@if.usp.br
  • †Contact author: s.martins-filho@unesp.br
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 085012 – Published 17 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q186-6z44

Abstract

We analyze the gauge dependence of the effective action in an interacting quantum theory of gravitational and matter fields. An explicit off-shell result is obtained in a general background gauge at one-loop order, which reduces in a particular gauge to the effective action found by ’t Hooft and Veltman [Ann. Inst. Henri Poincare Phys. Theor. A 20, 9 (1974)]. We confirm the validity of DeWitt-Kallosh theorem, which implies that the on-shell effective action should be independent of the gauge-fixing parameter. We employ this theorem to expose the nonrenormalizability of the theory in a general background gauge.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 085012– Published 17 April, 2026
  • Received 11 February 2026
  • Accepted 24 March 2026
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