Global Anomalies and Effective Field Theory

Siavash Golkar; Savdeep Sethi

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arXiv · 1512.02607

Global Anomalies and Effective Field Theory

Siavash Golkar·Savdeep Sethi

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Abstract

We show that matching anomalies under large gauge transformations and large diffeomorphisms can explain the appearance and non-renormalization of couplings in effective field theory. We focus on thermal effective field theory where we argue that the appearance of certain unusual Chern-Simons couplings is a consequence of global anomalies. As an example, we show that a mixed global anomaly in four dimensions fixes the chiral vortical effect coefficient. This is an experimentally measurable prediction from a global anomaly. For certain situations, we propose a simpler method for calculating global anomalies which uses correlation functions rather than eta invariants.

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Siavash Golkar, Savdeep Sethi. 2015-12-08. Global Anomalies and Effective Field Theory. https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02607

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