# References

In a seminal paper  Polyakov showed that due to the functional integration measure induced by the De Witt supermetric, two dimensional gravity, which is trivial at the classical level, at the quantum level becomes a highly non trivial theory. The mean value of a diffeomorphism invariant quantity $``$ in two dimensional gravity in the conformal gauge is given by 

$$𝒟[\sigma ]\sqrt{\frac{det^{}(P^{}P)}{det(\varphi _a,\varphi _b)det(\psi _k,\psi _l)}}det(\psi _m,\frac{g}{\tau _n})\frac{d\tau _i}{v(\tau )}.$$
(1)   
$`P^{}P`$ is the conformal Lichnerowicz-De Rahm operator, $`\varphi _a`$ are the conformal Killing vector fields and $`\psi _k`$ the Teichmüller deformations. The square root appearing in eq.(1) gives rise to the well known Liouville action; the terms after the square root are also explicitly computable and are absent for sphere topology. $`𝒟[\sigma ]`$ is the functional integration measure induced by the distance

$$(\delta \sigma ,\delta \sigma )=d^2\omega e^{2\sigma }\delta \sigma \delta \sigma $$
(2)   
and is not the translationally invariant measure which usually occurs in field theory.

The motivation of this investigation is to give the functional integral (1) a concrete definition, i.e. something that at least in principle could be put on a computer. The usual procedure in defining a functional integral is to reduce the number of degrees of freedom to a finite one, then perform the integration and finally take the limit when the number of degrees of freedom goes to infinity. One can imagine several ways to break down the number of degrees of freedom to a finite one, e.g. retaining a finite number of terms in a mode expansion but in doing so one easily breaks some basic invariances of the theory which are invariance under the $`SL(2C)`$ group for sphere and modular invariance for torus topology; these are remnants of the original diffeomorphism invariance of the action before the gauge fixing. The Regge scheme which consists to consider surfaces which are everywhere flat except for a finite number of points has the advantage to preserve exactly the above mentioned symmetries.

A complete inclusion of the Liouville term which, we recall, arises from the De Witt supermetric, appears necessary because in two dimensions the integration measure is the only term which plays a dynamical role; this was also indicated by the failure of naive Regge integration measure to reproduce the KPZ critical indices . For the role of the analogous of the Liouville action in $`D`$-dimensional gravity see .

Finally as the Regge scheme interpolates between the continuum theory and the more schematic dynamical triangulation models  it could serve to clarify “the still mysterious relation between the continuous 2d quantum gravity and the matrix models ”.

The exact computation of the Liouville action for Regge surfaces with the topology of the sphere was given in  and the result is

$$S_l=\frac{26}{12}\left\{\underset{i,ji}{}\frac{(1\alpha _i)(1\alpha _j)}{\alpha _i}\mathrm{log}|\omega _i\omega _j|+\lambda _0\underset{i}{}(\alpha _i\frac{1}{\alpha _i})+\underset{i}{}f(\alpha _i)\right\}$$
(3)   
$`\alpha _i`$ are the conical openings of the singularities ($`\alpha =1`$ is the plane) and $`\omega _i`$ are complex number describing the locations of the singularities on the complex plane closed by the point at infinity (Riemann sphere) and $`\lambda _0`$ the scale parameter. $`f`$ is a know function and the last term reduces to a topological invariant in the continuous limit. The procedure for proving eq.(3) employs the heat kernel technique; the Riemann-Roch theorem is used to fix the correct self adjoint extension of the operators $`P^{}P`$ and $`PP^{}`$ on a conical singularity. Similar procedure furnishes the discretized Liouville action for torus topology.

In  the question was addressed whether a simpler procedure exists for deriving eq.(3). More explicitly: which are the constraints the $`SL(2C)`$ invariance for the sphere topology, or modular invariance for the torus topology imposes on the discretized action?

Let us starts from Polyakov’s non local covariant form for the Liouville action on the continuum

$$S_l=\frac{26}{96\pi }\left\{d^2\omega d^2\omega ^{}(\sqrt{g}R)_\omega \frac{1}{}(\omega ,\omega ^{})(\sqrt{g}R)_\omega ^{}2(\mathrm{log}\frac{A}{A_0})d^2\omega \sqrt{g}R\right\}$$
(4)   
and look for a discretized structure where the curvature is localized at a finite number of points. Referring to sphere topology the most general form we have is

$$\underset{i,j}{}K_{ij}[\alpha ]\mathrm{log}|\omega _i\omega _j|+B(\lambda _0,\alpha ).$$
(5)   
Imposition of invariance under dilatations restricts the structure of the bulk term to $`B=\lambda _0_{i,j}K_{ij}[\alpha ]+F[\alpha ]`$. Further imposition of invariance under the general $`SL(2C)`$ transformation gives rise to the following equation

$$2\underset{j}{}h(\alpha _i,\alpha _j)(1\alpha _j)=\underset{m,n}{}(1\alpha _m)(1\alpha _n)h(\alpha _m,\alpha _n)$$
(6)   
where we have defined $`K_{ij}[\alpha ]=(1\alpha _i)(1\alpha _j)h(\alpha _i,\alpha _j)`$. Such equation has to be solved under the Gauss-Bonnet constraint $`_i(1\alpha _i)=2`$. It is possibile to show  that the unique solution is

$$h(\alpha _1,\alpha _2)=\left(\frac{1}{\alpha _1}+\frac{1}{\alpha _2}\right)\frac{h(1,1)}{2}$$
(7)   
which substituted into eq.(5) gives rise to the action eq.(3) except for the the overall normalization constant and the function $`F[\alpha ]`$. We know from the structure of the heat kernel technique, without actually performing the derivation, that $`F[\alpha ]`$ has the local structure $`F[\alpha ]=_if(\alpha _i)`$ which in the continuum limit reduces to a topological invariant. The normalization constant cannot be forecasted by group theory alone. In fact the same group theoretical argument can be applied to derive also the usual trace anomaly for a scalar field. The value $`26/12`$ can be borrowed from perturbation theory; it is worth recalling however that such value is non perturbative, and it is an outcome of the non perturbative the heat kernel derivation.

One can also derive the discretized Liouville action for torus topology exploiting invariance under the modular group; as the modular group is a discrete group and thus in a sense weaker than a Lie group, two further assumptions are needed. These are 1) the independence of the divergent behavior when two singularities collide of the topology of the surface; 2) a regularity property of the dependence of the action on the modulus. The result agrees with the complete derivation .

It is interesting that this group theoretical approach can be extended to the supersymmetric case. The treatment was done in collaboration with G. Policastro . Here the super Regge surface will be flat everywhere except for a finite number of points in superspace . For sphere topology the superconformal factor takes the form

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝐳)=\frac{1}{2}\left(\underset{i}{}(\alpha _i1)\mathrm{ln}[(zz_i+\theta \theta _i)(\overline{z}\overline{z}_i\overline{\theta }\overline{\theta }_i)]+\lambda _0\right).$$
(8)   
The procedure works very similarly as in the ordinary case with the result given by eq.(3) with $`|\omega _i\omega _j|`$ replaced by $`𝐳_{ij}\overline{𝐳}_{ij}`$ being $`𝐳_{ij}`$ the superdisplacement $`𝐳_{ij}=z_iz_j+\theta _i\theta _j`$ and the constant $`26/12`$ replaced by $`10/32`$ which again is borrowed from perturbation theory. Similar explicit result is obtained for the even spin structures on the supertorus, while for the odd spin structure on the supertorus the result is determined up to a second order polynomial in the coefficients of the zero modes . Finally to complete the treatment of the supersymmetric case one should compute explicitly the functional integration measure for the superconformal factor.

We recall that in the ordinary case such a measure is explicitly known in the form of a $`3N\times 3N`$ determinant . Such determinant satisfies exactly $`SL(2C)`$ or modular invariance. The analytical handling of such a term is an important problem and should clarify the relation between the original Weyl invariant discretized integration measure and the simpler translational invariant measure.