English

Chiral anomalies and Poincare invariance

High Energy Physics - Theory 2007-05-23 v2

Abstract

I study variations of the fermionic determinant for a nonabelian Dirac fermion with external vector and axial vector sources. I consider different regularizations, leading to different chiral anomalies when the variations are chiral transformations. For these different regularizations, I then consider variations associated with Poincare transformations. I find that both Lorentz and translational invariance are anomalously violated in general, but that they are respected when the variations of the determinant are regularized to give a Wess-Zumino consistent anomaly (the Bardeen anomaly). If the variations are regularized to give a covariant anomaly, then Poincare invariance is not respected. Following Manohar in an investigation of Poincare anomalies in a chiral gauge theory, this gives an alternative way to understand the need for a consistent regularization of the variations of the fermionic determinant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9912095,
  title  = {Chiral anomalies and Poincare invariance},
  author = {Jan B. Thomassen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9912095},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

8 pages, revised version, two references added