A mathematical analysis of the axial anomaly

DOI10.1007/S11005-018-1142-4zbMATH Open1417.81152arXiv1711.11301OpenAlexW2900672430MaRDI QIDQ2000934FDOQ2000934

Authors: Eugene Rabinovich 

Publication date: 1 July 2019

Published in: Letters in Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: As is well known to physicists, the axial anomaly of the massless free fermion in Euclidean signature is given by the index of the corresponding Dirac operator. We use the Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) formalism and the methods of equivariant quantization of Costello and Gwilliam to produce a new, mathematical derivation of this result. Using these methods, we formalize two conventional interpretations of the axial anomaly, the first as a violation of current conservation at the quantum level and the second as the obstruction to the existence of a well-defined fermionic partition function. Moreover, in the formalism of Costello and Gwilliam, anomalies are measured by cohomology classes in a certain obstruction-deformation complex. Our main result shows that---in the case of the axial symmetry---the relevant complex is quasi-isomorphic to the complex of de Rham forms of the spacetime manifold and that the anomaly corresponds to a top-degree cohomology class which is trivial if and only if the index of the corresponding Dirac operator is zero.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11301

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zbMATH Keywords

perturbative anomaliesBatlin-Vilkovisky formalismcohomological methods in quantum field theorymassless free fermion

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Heat kernel (35K08) Perturbative methods of renormalization applied to problems in quantum field theory (81T15) Feynman diagrams (81T18) Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds (81T20) Anomalies in quantum field theory (81T50) Spectral sequences, hypercohomology (18G40)

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Cited In (4)

• General covariance from the viewpoint of stacks
• AXIAL ANOMALY: THE MODERN STATUS
• The Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism and the determinant line bundle
• A proof of the axial anomaly

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