A study of fermions coupled to gauge and gravitational fields on a cylinder

Abstract Fermions on a cylinder coupled to background gravitation and gauge fields are examined by studying the geometric action associated with the symmetries of such a system. We are able to show that the gauge coupling constant is constrained to a value of 1/ N where N is an integer. Furthermore, in direct analogy with a Yang-Mills theory a new gravitational theory is introduced which couples to the fermions by promoting the coadjoint vector of the diffeomorphism sector to a dynamical variable. The classical dynamics of this theory are examined by displaying its symplectic structure and showing that it is equivalent to a one-dimensional system.