Contraints on Matter from Asymptotic Safety

Abstract

Recent studies of the ultraviolet behaviour of pure gravity suggest that it admits a non-Gaussian attractive fixed point, and therefore that the theory is asymptotically safe. We consider the effect on this fixed point of massless minimally coupled matter fields. The existence of a UV attractive fixed point puts bounds on the type and number of such fields.

Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures, revtex4; introduction expanded