Gravitational dressing of 3D conformal Galileon

Could a conformal Galileon be describing a gauge mode of a broader diffeomorphism invariant theory? We answer this question affirmatively in 3D by using a coset construction for a nonlinearly realized conformal symmetry. In particular, we show that the conformal Galileon emerges as a Stückelberg field of a local Weyl symmetry. The coset construction gives us a diffeomorphism and Weyl invariant 3D theory containing first, second, and third powers of the curvatures, their couplings to certain tensors made of the Galileon and its derivatives, and the conformal Galileon terms. In a theory with a boundary additional surface terms are required for the boundary Weyl anomaly cancellation. When gravity is switched off, the theory reduces to the conformal Galileon plus a boundary term. On the other hand, it reduces to a generalization of “New Massive Gravity” by A. Sinha, if the Weyl symmetry is gauge-fixed in a particular way. Last but not least, there exists a parameter space for which the theory has no propagating ghosts. Thus we show by an explicit construction that “New Massive Gravity” (and its generalization) is a unique scalar ghost free low energy effective field theory non-linearly realizing conformal symmetry in 3D.