Conformal to harmonic gauge for bosonic strings

Abstract

We consider the Polyakov theory of bosonic strings in conformal gauge which are used to study the conformal anomaly. However, it exhibits ghost number anomaly. We show how this anomaly can be avoided by connecting this theory to that of in background covariant harmonic gauge which is known to be free from conformal and ghost number current anomaly, by using suitably constructed finite-field-dependent BRST transformation. © CopyrightEPLA, 2019.