THE WZNW MODEL AT 2 LOOPS

We study perturbatively the (conformal) WZNW model. At one loop we compute one-particle irreducible two- and three-point current correlation functions, both in the conventional version and in the classically equivalent, chiral, nonlocal, induced version of the model. At two loops we compute the two-point function and find that it vanishes (modulo infrared-induced logarithms). We use dimensional regularization and the R* operation for removing infrared divergences. The outcome of the calculations is insensitive to the treatment of the epsilon(munu) tensor as a two-dimensional or d-dimensional object. Our results indicate that the one-particle irreducible current correlation functions constitute an effective action equal to the original WZNW action with the familiar level shift, k --> k + h.