Fermions, boundaries and conformal and chiral anomalies in $d=3,\ 4$ and $5$ dimensions

Abstract

In the presence of boundaries, the quantum anomalies acquire additional boundary terms. In odd dimensions the integrated conformal anomaly, for which the bulk contribution is known to be absent, is non-trivial due to the boundary terms. These terms became a subject of active study in the recent years. In the present paper we continue our previous study [1], [2] and compute explicitly the anomaly for fermions in dimensions $d=3, \ 4 \$ and $5$. The calculation in dimension $5$ is new. It contains both contributions of the gravitational field and the gauge fields to the anomaly. In dimensions $d=3$ and $4$ we reproduce and clarify the derivation of the results available in the literature. Imposing the conformal invariant mixed boundary conditions for fermions in odd dimension $d$ we particularly pay attention to the necessity of choosing the doubling representation for gamma matrices. In this representation there exists a possibility to define chirality and thus address the question of the chiral anomaly. The anomaly is entirely due to terms defined on the boundary. They are calculated in the present paper in dimensions $d=3$ and $5$ due to both gravitational and gauge fields. To complete the picture we re-evaluate the chiral anomaly in $4$ dimensions and find a new boundary term that is supplementary to the well-known Pontryagin term.Comment: 32 page