Chiral Anomalies and Topology

Abstract

When a quantum field theory has a symmetry, global or local like in gauge theories, in the tree or classical approximation formal manipulations lead to believe that the symmetry can also be implemented in the full quantum theory, provided one uses the proper quantization rules. While this is often true, it is not a general property and therefore requires a proof because simple formal manipulations ignore the unavoidable divergences of perturbation theory. The existence of invariant regularizations allows solving the problem in most cases but the combination of gauge symmetry and chiral fermions leads to subtle issues. Depending on the specific group and field content, anomalies are found: obstructions to the quantization of chiral gauge symmetries.Because anomalies take the form of local polynomials in the fields, are linked to local group transformations, but vanish for global (rigid) transformations they have a topological character.In these notes we review various perturbative and non-perturbative regularization techniques, and show that they leave room for possible anomalies when both gauge fields and chiral fermions are present. We determine the form of anomalies in simple examples. We relate anomalies to the index of the Dirac operator in a gauge background. We exhibit gauge instantons that contribute to the anomaly in the example of the CP(N-1) models and SU(2) gauge theories. We briefly mentioned a few physical consequences. For many years the problem of anomalies had been discussed only within the framework of perturbation theory. New non-perturbative solutions based on lattice regularization have recently been proposed. We describe the so-called overlap and domain wall fermion formulations.