In theoretical physics, a gravitational anomaly is an example of a gauge anomaly: it is an effect of quantum mechanics — usually a one-loop diagram—that invalidates the general covariance of a theory of general relativity combined with some other fields. The adjective "gravitational" is derived from the symmetry of a gravitational theory, namely from general covariance. A gravitational anomaly is generally synonymous with diffeomorphism anomaly, since general covariance is symmetry under coordinate reparametrization; i.e. diffeomorphism.
General covariance is the basis of general relativity, the classical theory of gravitation. Moreover, it is necessary for the consistency of any theory of quantum gravity, since it is required in order to cancel unphysical degrees of freedom with a negative norm, namely gravitons polarized along the time direction. Therefore, all gravitational anomalies must cancel out.
The anomaly usually appears as a Feynman diagram with a chiral fermion running in the loop (a polygon) with n external gravitons attached to the loop where where is the spacetime dimension.
Consider a classical gravitational field represented by the vielbein and a quantized Fermi field . The generating functional for this quantum field is
where is the quantum action and the factor before the Lagrangian is the vielbein determinant, the variation of the quantum action renders
in which we denote a mean value with respect to the path integral by the bracket . Let us label the Lorentz, Einstein and Weyl transformations respectively by their parameters ; they spawn the following anomalies:
Lorentz anomaly
which readily indicates that the energy-momentum tensor has an anti-symmetric part.
Einstein anomaly
this is related to the non-conservation of the energy-momentum tensor, i.e. .
Weyl anomaly
which indicates that the trace is non-zero.
Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.
Some topics covered in this class are: The Index theorem, solitons, topological band insulators/superconductors, bulk-edge correpondence, quantum anomalies, quantum pumping, symmetry protected topolog
The course builds on the course QFT1 and QFT2 and develops in parallel to the course on Gauge Theories and the SM.
This course is an introduction to the non-perturbative bootstrap approach to Conformal Field Theory and to the Gauge/Gravity duality, emphasizing the fruitful interplay between these two ideas.
En théorie quantique des champs, on dit qu'une symétrie de la théorie possède une anomalie (ou que la symétrie est anormale) lorsqu'elle est une invariance classique au niveau de l'action mais qu'elle est brisée une fois que la théorie est quantifiée. Plus précisément une anomalie survient lorsque le courant de Noether est conservé au niveau classique mais que les interactions quantiques brisent cette conservation. Cet article présente les différents types d'anomalies que l'on peut rencontrer en physique théorique.
In this Letter, we address the question of whether the conformal invariance can be considered as a global symmetry of a theory of fundamental interactions. To describe Nature, this theory must contain a mechanism of spontaneous breaking of the scale symmet ...
In the standard model of particle physics, the chiral anomaly can occur in relativistic plasmas and plays a role in the early Universe, protoneutron stars, heavy-ion collisions, and quantum materials. It gives rise to a magnetic instability if the number d ...
Amer Physical Soc2024
We revisit the calculation of chiral anomalies for global and gauge symmetries in the framework of the covariant derivative expansion (CDE). Due to the presence of UV divergences, the result is an ambiguous quantity that depends on the regularization proce ...