Mathematical construction of chiral anomaly (Q1175009)

The chiral anomaly --- the breakdown of the classical conservation law for the chiral fermion current due to the quantum effects was investigated by perturbative field theoretical methods, in the path integral approach and by the differential geometric methods. The phenomenon is deeply connected with the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. In the article the chiral anomaly is rigorously constructed for quantized fermions on a torus coupled to an external gauge field. The path measure is defined via lattice regularization. For a rigorous interpretation of the chiral anomaly the heat kernel regularization of the fermion current is needed (regardless of the ``automatical'' lattice cut-off regularization). It is introduced in a non-perturbative way the notion of the large momenta double species of fermions (which are typical for the lattice approaches). It is shown, that in the continuum limit the double species go out from the Hilbert space bearing the chiral current (due to the presence of the chiral symmetry breaking term proposed by Wilson). The correct chiral anomaly is found.