2-DIMENSIONAL GRAVITY AND NONLINEAR GAUGE-THEORY

We construct a gauge theory based on nonlinear Lie algebras, which is an extension of the usual gauge theory based on Lie algebras. It is a new approach to generalization of the gauge theory. The two-dimensional gravity is derived from nonlinear Poincare algebra, which is the new Yang-Mills-like formulation of the gravitational theory. As typical examples, we investigate R2 gravity with dynamical torsion and generic form of ''dilaton'' gravity. The supersymmetric extension of this theory is also discussed. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.