String-inspired gravity with interacting point particles.

We reformulate two dimensional string-inspired gravity with point particles as a gauge theory of the extended Poincaré group. A non-minimal gauge coupling is necessary for the equivalence of the two descriptions. The classical one-particle problem is analyzed completely. In addition, we obtain the many-particle effective action after eliminating the gravity degrees of freedom. We investigate properties of this effective action, and show how to recover the geometrical description. Quantization of the gauge-theoretic model is carried out and the explicit one-particle solution is found. However, we show that the formulation leads to a quantum mechanical inconsistency in the two-particle case. Possible cures are discussed. Submitted to: PRD 15 CTP #2431 May 1995 This work is supported in part by funds provided by the U.S. Department of Energy (D.O.E.) under contracts #DE-AC02-76ER03069 and #DE-AC02-89ER40509, as well as in part by the National Science Foundation under contracts #INT-910559 and #INT-910653.