Chiral anomaly in contorted spacetimes (Q1807401)

The chiral anomaly in Riemann-Cartan spacetimes with torsion is studied at the quantum level. The Dirac-Lagrangian is decomposed into a Riemannian and a spin-contorsion piece, the last one containing the one-form \(A\) of the axial vector torsion. Using diagrammatic techniques and the Pauli-Villars regularization scheme it is shown that besides the familiar Riemannian term only the Pontrjagin type four-form \(dA\wedge dA\) arises additionally in the chiral anomaly, but not the Nieh-Yan term \(d^*A\). Implications of the chiral anomaly for Ashtekar's non-perturbative canonical approach to quantum gravity are also discussed.