1998/08/31 by Kurt Lechner · 21 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Boson #Classical mechanics #Covariant transformation #Diffeomorphism #Effective action #Geometry #Gravitation #Homogeneous space #Invariant (physics) #Lorentz covariance #Lorentz transformation #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Pure mathematics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Theoretical physics #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0550-3213(98)00626-9
published in Nuclear Physics B 537(1-3), 361-380 (Elsevier BV) · 20 pages, references added, misprints corrected
arxiv created 1998/09/10 · openalex publication_date 1999/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Starting from a manifestly Lorentz- and diffeomorphism-invariant classical action we perform a perturbative derivation of the gravitational anomalies for chiral bosons in 4n+2 dimensions. The manifest classical invariance is achieved using a newly developed method based on a scalar auxiliary field and two new bosonic local symmetries. The resulting anomalies coincide with the ones predicted by the index theorem. In the two-dimensional case, moreover, we perform an exact covariant computation of the effective action for a chiral boson (a scalar) which is seen to coincide with the effective action for a two-dimensional complex Weyl-fermion. All these results support the quantum reliability of the new, at the classical level manifestly invariant, method.