PHYSICAL REVIEW D

VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4

15 AUGUST 1989

Nonrecursive zeta-function regularization of the Fujikawa anomaly factor

Hans J. Wospakrik
Department of Physics, Institute of Technology Bandung, Jalan Ganesha 10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia

(Received 14 March 1989)

A direct nonrecursive method of computing the Fujikawa anomaly factor using zeta-function regularization is presented.

I. INTRODUCTION

11. ZETA-FUNCTION REGULARIZATION

AND ANOMALY

Nowadays, the source of chiral anomalies in the quantized gauge field theories seems to be very well understood. This is due to the works of Fujikawa who, in a
series of remarkable papers,'-5 showed that these are related to the fact that the fermion path-integral measure
[ D $ ] [ D $ ] is not invariant under the chiral transformations, and that the Jacobian gives rise to an extra phase
factor which corresponds to the chiral anomalies.
The "Fujikawa Jacobian" is given by

with a ( x ) the infinitesimal local chiral gauge transformation parameter and

where $ , ( X I
are the eigenfunctions of the Hermitian
Dirac operator 0 with eigenvalues h , , i.e.,

+,+ +

in the Euclidean spacetime with signature ( +,

, ).
Notice that our metric convention follows that of
't Hooft and ~ e l t m a n In
. ~ the following we call the A ( x )
factor in (1.2) the "Fujikawa anomaly factor," which is
an ill-defined conditionally convergent quantity, and to
compute it, Fujikawa made use of the "large eigenvalues"
regularization that ultimately picked out the correct expression for the anomalous term.
Afterwards, Balachandran et al.' evaluated the
Fujikawa anomaly factor using zeta-function regularization, where in computing the asymptotic expansion of the
corresponding diagonal part of the heat kernel they relied
on a recursive algorithm. Gamboa-Saravi et a l . , on the
other hand, used zeta-function regularization of functional determinants to compute the Fujikawa Jacobian, but
they relied on the tabulated Seeley's coefficients.
It is the purpose of this paper to use the zeta-function
regularization as well to evaluate the Fujikawa anomaly
factor and to apply instead a direct, nonrecursive computational method which is related to a n approach employed by Fujikawa and recently extended by
~e~omechie.~

In Euclidean spacetime, let us consider In ) to be the

eigenfunctions of the Hermitian Dirac operator 0 in the
"n representation" with the eigenvalues h , , i.e.,

The "coordinate o r x representation" of D 2 is

where

Here we have considered the U(1 ) gauge field theories for

simplicity.
By choosing Ix ) to be the coordinate "orthonormal"
basis so that I$,( x )= ( x n ) , the Fujikawa anomaly factor
in Eq. (1.2)reads

The trace is taken with respect to the spinor indices that

are carried by the ket-bra 1 n ) ( n 1.
T o regularize A ( x ) in Eq. (2.31, let us consider the following "zeta-function operator":

(2.4)
Using the representation (2.41, we consider A ( x ) as the
"coincidence limit" for s -0:

A ( x ) = lim
y-x

1367

1
-J
r ( ~o*)d t t s - 1 t r y 5 ( y j e t p 2 j x ) .

@ 1989

(2.5)

The American Physical Society

COMMENTS

1368

The coincidence limit y + x is introduced in order that

the coordinate representation of a 2is given in the x representation. So, our problem now amounts to evaluating
the "heat kernel,"
( y l ~ l )x= ( y l e - ' q x )
=e

-t ~ , '

(ylx)

where we have used the orthonormal plane-wave basis to

express the coordinate representation of the 6 function:
i.e.,

Using the operator version of the Leibniz rule,

and noting that A, is not a differential operator, we obtain the following expression for the diagonal part of the
heat kernel:

40

where

We do not write explicitly the a , ' s , for m f 2 , because

they will give rise to regular terms at s=O after performing the t integration, so these terms will drop out after
taking the limit s -0, since r(s)-'-0.
T o evaluate the regularized Fujikawa anomaly factor
in Eq. (2.5), we isolate first the singular part of the t integral at s=O by writing the t integral as a sum of two integrals: i.e.,

Substituting Eq. (2.12) into the first integral and performing the integration, we immediately see that it is singular
at s=O. The second integral, on the.other hand, is regular at s=O. This could be easily shown by inserting the
spectral sum representation for the heat kernel, i.e.,
( x l ~ l )x = lim ( y ~ e ' " ~ l )x
y-x

( x l H l x ) = lim ( y l ~ l )x
Y -x

where k.Dx Ek,D,, .

After rescaling k and expanding the exponential integrand in powers o f t , we obtain

T o evaluate the k integral of (xi H l x ) in Eq. (2.101, we

use the symmetric integration formulas

into the second integral of Eq. (2.13) and performing the

integration at s=O. The result is
Jamdt t-'(xIHlx ) = lim
Y-x

2 [ - ~ i (-h:al]
,

where -Ei( - z ) , z > 0 is analytic in the z plane with a cut

along the negative real z axis.'' So, this result confirms
our assertion above.
Hence, the second term of Eq. (2.13) drops out within
the limit s-+O, and the regularized Fujikawa anomaly
factor reduces to
1
A ( x ) = S-o
lim -try5Jadt
r(s)

t s - l ( x ( ~ l x)

(2.16)

Substituting Eq. (2.12) into Eq. (2.16) and using

~ ( S ) - ' = S + ~ S ~ + O (for
S ~ small
)
s, where y is the
Euler-Mascheroni constant, then after taking the trace,
integration, and the limit s -0, we ultimately obtain

k
rr2

. . . k ,1,, +,=O,

n=0,1,2 , . . . , etc.

P I P2

(2.1Id)
Performing the k integration using (2.11), the diagonal
part of the heat kernel becomes

the celebrated chiral- (or Adler-Bell-Jackiw) anomaly

term.
111. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we have shown that there is a direct,

nonrecursive method of computing the asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel for the zeta-function regularization of the Fujikawa anomaly factor.

40

COMMENTS

'K. Fujikawa, Phys. Rev. D 21, 2848 (1980); see also Phys. Rev.
Lett. 42, 1195 (1979).
*K. Fujikawa, Phys. Rev. D 23, 2262 (1981);see also Phys. Rev.
Lett. 44, 1733 (1980).
3K. Fujikawa, Phys. Rev. D 25, 2584 (1982).
4 ~ Fujikawa,
.
Phys. Lett. 108B, 33 (1982).
5 ~ Fujikawa,
.
Phys. Rev. D 31, 341 (1985).
6 ~ 't. Hooft and M. Veltman, in Particle Interactions a t Very
High Energies, proceedings of the Second Louvain Summer

1369

Institute on Particle Interactions at Very High Energies: Duality in Elementary Particle Physics, 1973, edited by D.
Spieser, F. Halzen, and J. Weyers (Plenum, New York, 1974),
Part B, p. 177.
'A. P. Balachandran et al., Phys. Rev. D 25,2713 (1982).
s ~Gamboa-Saravi
.
et al., Phys. Rev. D 30, 1353 (1984).
9 ~ I.
. Nepomechie, Phys. Rev. D 31, 3291 (1985).
'ON.
N. Lebedev, Special Functions and their Applications
(Dover, New York, 1972).