X iv : g r - qc / 9 70 80 69 v 2 4 S ep 1 99 7 On the gravity renormalization off shell .

Using as an example the Einstein gravity with the cosmological constant, we discuss the calculation of renormalization group functions off shell. We found, that gauge dependent terms should be absorbed by the nonlinear renormalization of metric. Nevertheless, some terms can be included in the renormalization of Newton’s constant. This ambiguity in the renormalization prescription is discussed. 1. The high energy behavior of the gravity interaction draws the attention of researchers for a very long time. It is well known, that the perturbation theory for the Einstein gravity differs much from the Yang-Mills case due to the dimensional coupling constant. Although the theory is not renormalizable and its contribution to the low energy physics is very small, a great number of new ideas and field theory methods originate in the research of the gravity interaction. Here we should especially mention the background field method [1]. In particular, it played the important role in the t’Hooft and Veltman derivation of the algorithm for the one-loop divergences calculation [2] (that allowed to obtain one-loop divergences for Einstein gravity). E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]