NONCOVARIANT GAUGES IN SIMPLE SUPERGRAVITY

A gauge-averaging functional of the axial type is studied for simple s upergravity at one loop about hat Euclidean four-space bounded by a th ree-sphere, or two concentric three-spheres. This is a generalization of recent work on the axial gauge in quantum supergravity on manifolds with boundary. Ghost modes obey nonlocal boundary conditions of the s pectral type, in that half of them obey Dirichlet or Neumann condition s at the boundary. In both cases, they give a vanishing contribution t o the one-loop divergence. The admissibility of noncovariant gauges at the classical level is also proved.