Index Theorems and Domain Walls

The Atiyah-Patodi-Singer (APS) index theorem relates the index of a Dirac operator to an integral of the Pontryagin density in the bulk (which is equal to global chiral anomaly) and an $\eta$ invariant on the boundary (which defines the parity anomaly). We show that the APS index theorem holds for configurations with domain walls that are defined as surfaces where background gauge fields have discontinuities.Comment: 11+1 pages, v2: a reference adde

Heat Trace Asymptotics on Noncommutative Spaces

This is a mini-review of the heat kernel expansion for generalized Laplacians on various noncommutative spaces. Applications to the spectral action principle, renormalization of noncommutative theories and anomalies are also considered.Comment: This is a contribution to the Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Geometry Conference in honor of Thomas P. Branson, published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA

Gravitational parity anomaly with and without boundaries

In this paper we consider gravitational parity anomaly in three and four dimensions. We start with a re-computation of this anomaly on a 3D manifold without boundaries and with a critical comparison of our results to the previous calculations. Then we compute the anomaly on 4D manifolds with boundaries with local bag boundary conditions. We find, that gravitational parity anomaly is localized on the boundary and contains a gravitational Chern-Simons terms together with a term depending of the extrinsic curvature. We also discuss the main properties of the anomaly, as the conformal invariance, relations between 3D and 4D anomalies, etc.Comment: 16 pages, final version, accepted for publication in JHE