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High Energy Physics - Theory, hep-th,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
The gauge dependence of the conformal anomaly for spin 3/2 and spin 2 fields
in non-conformal supergravities has been a long standing puzzle. In this Letter
we argue that the `correct' gauge choice is the one that follows from requiring
all terms that would imply a violation of the Wess-Zumino consistency condition
to be absent in the counterterm, because otherwise the usual link between the
anomaly and the one-loop divergence becomes invalid. Remarkably, the `good'
choice of gauge is the one that confirms our previous result that a complete
cancellation of conformal anomalies in D=4 can only be achieved for N-extended
(Poincar\'e) supergravities with $N\geq 5$.
