Trace anomalies in chiral theories revisited
Abstract
Motivated by the search for possible CP violating terms in the trace of the energy-momentum tensor in theories coupled to gravity we revisit the problem of trace anomalies in chiral theories. We recalculate the latter and ascertain that in the trace of the energy-momentum tensor of theories with chiral fermions at one-loop the Pontryagin density appears with an imaginary coefficient. We argue that this may break unitarity, in which case the trace anomaly has to be used as a selective criterion for theories, analogous to the chiral anomalies in gauge theories. We analyze some remarkable consequences of this fact, that seem to have been overlooked in the literature.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1403.2606,
title = {Trace anomalies in chiral theories revisited},
author = {Loriano Bonora and Stefano Giaccari and Bruno Lima de Souza},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.2606},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
16 pages; v2: added 2 references in a footnote; v3: a few typos corrected, published in JHEP