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Anomaly of 4d Weyl fermions with discrete symmetries

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-05-29 v4

Abstract

We derive explicit anomaly-index formulas for four-dimensional Weyl fermions charged under the finite symmetries Spin×Zn\mathrm{Spin}\times\mathbb Z_n and Spin×Z2FZ2mF\mathrm{Spin}\times_{\mathbb Z_2^{\mathrm F}}\mathbb Z_{2m}^{\mathrm F}. The strategy is to start from the standard perturbative anomaly indices for Spin×U(1)\mathrm{Spin}\times\mathrm U(1) and Spin×Z2FU(1)=Spinc\mathrm{Spin}\times_{\mathbb Z_2^{\mathrm F}}\mathrm U(1)=\mathrm{Spin}^c, and then restrict the continuous U(1)\mathrm U(1) symmetry to a finite cyclic subgroup. On the level of invertible field theories this gives natural homomorphisms TP5(Spin×U(1))TP5(Spin×Zn),TP5(Spinc)TP5(Spin×Z2FZ2mF). \mathrm{TP}_5(\mathrm{Spin}\times\mathrm U(1)) \longrightarrow \mathrm{TP}_5(\mathrm{Spin}\times\mathbb Z_n),\quad \mathrm{TP}_5(\mathrm{Spin}^c) \longrightarrow \mathrm{TP}_5(\mathrm{Spin}\times_{\mathbb Z_2^{\mathrm F}}\mathbb Z_{2m}^{\mathrm F}). We compute these maps explicitly by evaluating reduced η\eta-invariants on geometric representatives of the finite anomaly groups. For Spin×Zn\mathrm{Spin}\times\mathbb Z_n, the relevant backgrounds are the five-dimensional lens-space bundle X(n;1,1)X(n;1,1) and the product L(n;1)×K3L(n;1)\times\mathrm{K3}. For Spin×Z2FZ2mF\mathrm{Spin}\times_{\mathbb Z_2^{\mathrm F}}\mathbb Z_{2m}^{\mathrm F}, the relevant backgrounds are L(m;1,1,1)L(m;1,1,1) and, depending on the parity of mm, either L(m;1)×EnriquesL(m;1)\times\mathrm{Enriques} or L(m;1)×K3L(m;1)\times\mathrm{K3}. The output is a pair of integer-valued anomaly indices for each finite symmetry. These indices are normalized in the cyclic factors of the finite anomaly group, so they can be used directly in anomaly-cancellation checks for fermions with discrete gauge or global symmetries.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.19710,
  title  = {Anomaly of 4d Weyl fermions with discrete symmetries},
  author = {Zheyan Wan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.19710},
  year   = {2026}
}

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22 pages