- Open Access
Weyl anomaly for chiral fermions
Phys. Rev. D 113, 105016 – Published 22 May, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ry3t-xm88
Abstract
We compute the parity-odd part of the Weyl anomaly for chiral fermions in a background gravitational field. We start from a manifestly real form of the Lagrangian (that is, not only real up to a total derivative), and we regularize it by means of Pauli-Villars fermions. All parity-odd terms in the anomaly cancel in the integrand, so that the result of the anomaly is necessarily parity even.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (20)
- L. Bonora, S. Giaccari, and B. Lima de Souza, Trace anomalies in chiral theories revisited, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2014) 117; L. Bonora and R. Soldati, On the trace anomaly for Weyl fermions, arXiv:1909.11991; Anomaly footprints in SM+Gravity, arXiv:2510.25217.
- S. M. Christensen and M. J. Duff, Axial and conformal anomalies for arbitrary spin in gravity and supergravity, Phys. Lett. 76B, 571 (1978); New gravitational index theorems and supertheorems, Nucl. Phys. B154, 301 (1979).
- S. Abdallah, S. A. Franchino-Viñas, and M. B. Fröb, Trace anomaly for Weyl fermions using the Breitenlohner-Maison scheme for , J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2021) 271; Trace anomalies for Weyl fermions: Too odd to be true?, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 2531, 012004 (2023).
- F. Bastianelli and R. Martelli, On the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2016) 178; F. Bastianelli and M. Broccoli, Axial gravity and anomalies of fermions, Eur. Phys. J. C 80, 276 (2020); On the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion in a gauge background, 79, 292 (2019); Weyl fermions in a non-Abelian gauge background and trace anomalies, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2019) 241; F. Bastianelli and F. Comberiati, Path integral calculation of heat kernel traces with first order operator insertions, Nucl. Phys. B960, 115183 (2020).
- M. B. Fröb and J. Zahn, Trace anomaly for chiral fermions via Hadamard subtraction, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2019) 223; The Weyl anomaly in interacting quantum field theory on curved spacetimes, arXiv:2504.17854.
- J. M. Gipson, Path integral derivation of the chiral anomalies of Dirac fermions coupled to gauge and gravitational fields in even space-time dimensions, Phys. Rev. D 29, 2989 (1984).
- R. Larue, J. Quevillon, and R. Zwicky, Gravity-gauge anomaly constraints on the energy-momentum tensor, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2024) 307; Trace anomaly of Weyl fermions via the path integral, 12 (2023) 064.
- Y. S. Stanev, Correlation functions of conserved currents in four dimensional conformal field theory, Nucl. Phys. B865, 200 (2012).
- C. Y. Liu, Investigation of Pontryagin trace anomaly using Pauli-Villars regularization, Nucl. Phys. B980, 115840 (2022).
- L. Bonora, Fermions and Anomalies in Quantum Field Theories (Springer, New York, 2023), ISBN [Amazon][WorldCat], [Amazon][WorldCat], 10.1007/978-3-031-21928-3.
- T. Eguchi, P. B. Gilkey, and A. J. Hanson, Gravitation, gauge theories and differential geometry, Phys. Rep. 66, 213 (1980).
- H. Godazgar and H. Nicolai, A rederivation of the conformal anomaly for spin-, Classical Quantum Gravity 35, 105013 (2018).
- K. Okuyama and H. Suzuki, Gauge invariant Pauli-Villars regularization for chiral fermion, Prog. Theor. Phys. 98, 463 (1997).
- A. Vilenkin, Pauli-Villars regularization and trace anomalies, Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. 44A, 441 (1978).
- H. K. Dreiner, H. E. Haber, and S. P. Martin, Two-component spinor techniques and Feynman rules for quantum field theory and supersymmetry, Phys. Rep. 494, 1 (2010).
- L. D. Faddeev and A. A. Slavnov, Gauge fields. Introduction to quantum theory, Front. Phys. 50, 1 (1980).
- C. Itzykson and J. B. Zuber, Quantum Field Theory (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980), ISBN [Amazon][WorldCat].
- K. Fujikawa, Comment on chiral and conformal anomalies, Phys. Rev. Lett. 44, 1733 (1980).
- L. Bonora, P. Pasti, and M. Bregola, Weyl cocycles, Classical Quantum Gravity 3, 635 (1986).
- R. Bittleston and K. Costello, The one-loop QCD -function as an index, arXiv:2510.26764.