Dimensional-reduction anomaly in spherically symmetric spacetimes - art. no. 044033

In D-dimensional spacetimes which can be foliated by it-dimensional homogen eous subspaces, a quantum field can be decomposed in terms of modes on the subspaces, reducing the system to a collection of (D-n)-dimensional fields. This allows one to write bare D-dimensional field quantities like the Gree n function and the effective action as sums of their (D-n)-dimensional coun terparts in the dimensionally reduced theory. It has been shown, however, t hat renormalization breaks this relationship between the original and dimen sionally reduced theories, an effect called the dimensional-reduction anoma ly. We examine the dimensional-reduction anomaly for the important case of spherically symmetric spaces.