Nonperturbative weak-coupling analysis of the quantum Liouville field theory

Two independent weak-coupling expansions are developed for the Liouville quantum field theory on a circle. In the first, the coupling of the nonzero modes is treated as a perturbation on the exact solution to the zero-mode problem (quantum mechanics with an exponential potential). The second approach is a weak-coupling approximation to an explicit operator solution which expresses various Liouville operators as functions of a free massless field using a Bäcklund transformation. It is shown that the free state space associated with the latter solution must be restricted to the sector which is odd with respect to a type of “parity.” Various matrix elements are computed to order g¹⁰ using both approaches, yielding identical results.