A CONTINUUM APPROACH TO 2D-QUANTUM GRAVITY FOR C > 1

Two dimensional induced quantum gravity with matter central charge c>1 is studied by carefully treating both diffeomorphism and Weyl symmetries. It is shown that, for the gauge fixing condition R(g) (scalar curvature) = const, one obtains a modification of the David–Distler–Kawai version of KPZ scaling. We obtain a class of models with real string tension for all values c>1. They contain a free parameter which is, however, strongly constrained by the requirement of the non triviality of the model. The possible physical significance of the new model is discussed. In particular we note that it describes smooth surfaces imbedded in d-dimensional flat space time for arbitrary d, which is consistent with recent numerical results for d=3.