Description
Recent works have argued that improved one-loop beta functions, which incorporate the physical momentum dependence of one-loop–corrected higher-derivative gravity theories, provide the most suitable description of their high-energy behaviour. We critically examined the validity of this claim. We have computed the explicit gauge dependence of the one-loop momentum running of curvature-squared operators in both quadratic gravity and conformal gravity. We have found that this momentum running is gauge-dependent. We then discuss the implications of this result for the consistency of the approach and for the physical predictivity of these theories.