Canceling the U (1) Anomaly in the S Matrix of N=4 Supergravity

Abstract

N=4 supergravity is understood to contain a U(1) anomaly which manifests itself via the nonvanishing of loop-level scattering amplitudes that violate a tree-level charge conservation rule. In this Letter we provide detailed evidence that at one loop such anomalous amplitudes can be set to zero by the addition of a finite local counterterm. We show that the same counterterm also cancels evanescent contributions that play an important role in the analysis of ultraviolet divergences in dimensionally regularized gravity. These cancellations call for a reanalysis of the four-loop ultraviolet divergences previously found in this theory without the addition of such counterterms.