Axial gauge in Euclidean quantum gravity

The axial gauge is applied to the analysis of Euclidean quantum gravity on manifolds with boundary. A set of boundary conditions which are completely invariant under infinitesimal diffeomorphisms require that spatial components of metric perturbations should vanish at the boundary, jointly with all components of the ghost one-form and of the gauge-averaging functional. If the latter is taken to be of the axial type, all components of metric perturbations obey Dirichlet conditions, and all ghost modes are forced to vanish identically. The one-loop divergence coincides with the contribution resulting from three-dimensional transverse-traceless perturbations.