Chiral and non-chiral $p$-form gauge fields have gravitational anomalies and anomalies of Green-Schwarz type. This means that they are most naturally realized as the boundary modes of bulk topological phases in one higher dimensions. We give a systematic description of the total bulk-boundary system which is analogous to the realization of a chiral fermion on the boundary of a massive fermion. The anomaly of the boundary theory is given by the partition function of the bulk theory, which we explicitly compute in terms of the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer $η$-invariant. We use our formalism to determine the $\mathrm{SL}(2,{\mathbb Z})$ anomaly of the 4d Maxwell theory. We also apply it to study the worldvolume theories of a single D-brane and an M5-brane in the presence of orientifolds, orbifolds, and S-folds in string, M, and F theories. In an appendix we also describe a simple class of non-unitary invertible topological theories whose partition function is not a bordism invariant, illustrating the necessity of the unitarity condition in the cobordism classification of the invertible phases.
We study 't Hooft anomalies and the related anomaly inflow for subsystem global symmetries. These symmetries and anomalies arise in a number of exotic systems, including models with fracton order such as the X-cube model. As is the case for ordinary global symmetries, anomalies for subsystem symmetries can be canceled by anomaly inflow from a bulk theory in one higher dimension; the corresponding bulk is therefore a non-trivial subsystem symmetry protected topological (SSPT) phase. We demonstrate these phenomena in several examples with continuous and discrete subsystem global symmetries, as w…
We demonstrate that 3+1-dimensional quantum electrodynamics with fermionic charges, fermionic monopoles, and fermionic dyons arises at the edge of a 4+1-dimensional gapped state with short-range entanglement. This state cannot be adiabatically connected to a product state, even in the absence of any symmetry. This provides independent evidence for the obstruction found by arXiv:1306.3238 to a 3+1-dimensional short-distance completion of all-fermion electrodynamics. The non-triviality of the bulk is demonstrated by a novel fermion number anomaly.
Many noncompact Type I orbifolds satisfy tadpole constraints yet are anomalous. We present a generalization of the anomaly inflow mechanism for some of these cases in six and four dimensions.
We consider (4+1)-dimensional topologically massive tensor gauge theory. This theory is an analog of the (2+1)-dimensional topologically massive Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. If the space has a boundary, we find that a (3+1)-dimensional gapless theory appears at the boundary. This gapless theory is a chiral version of the (3+1)-dimensional $φ$ theory. This gapless theory is protected by the anomaly inflow mechanism of subsystem symmetry. We also consider the corner of our topologically massive tensor gauge theory, and find that an infinite number of (1+1)-dimensional chiral bosons appear at the…
We review the anomaly inflow mechanism on D-branes and O-planes. In particular, we compute the one-loop world-volume anomalies and derive the RR anomalous couplings required for their cancellation.
Using the anomaly inflow mechanism, we compute the flavor/Lorentz non-invariant contribution to the partition function in a background with a U(1) isometry. This contribution is a local functional of the background fields. By identifying the U(1) isometry with Euclidean time we obtain a contribution of the anomaly to the thermodynamic partition function from which hydrostatic correlators can be efficiently computed. Our result is in line with, and an extension of, previous studies on the role of anomalies in a hydrodynamic setting. Along the way we find simplified expressions for Bardeen-Zumin…
We show that the effective action that results from integrating out massive Kaehler-Dirac fermions propagating on a curved three dimensional space is a topological gravity theory of Chern-Simons type. In the presence of a domain wall, massless, two dimensional Kaehler-Dirac fermions appear that are localized to the wall. Potential gravitational anomalies arising for these domain wall fermions are cancelled via anomaly inflow from the bulk gravitational theory. We also study the invariance of the theory under large gauge transformations. The analysis and conclusions generalize straightforwardly…
We study the membrane-like structure of topological charge density and its fluctuations in the QCD vacuum. Quark zero modes are localized on the membranes and the resultant gauge anomaly is cancelled by the gauge variation of a Chern-Simons type effective action in the bulk via the anomaly inflow mechanism. The coupling between brane fluctuations, described by the rotations of its normal vector, and the Chern-Simons current provides the needed anomaly inflow to the membrane. This coupling is also related to the axial U(1) anomaly which can induce brane punctures, and consequently quark-antiqua…
We study a phenomenon that electric charges are "teleported" between two spatially separated objects without exchanging charged particles at all. For example, this phenomenon happens between a magnetic monopole and an axion string in four dimensions, two vortices in three dimensions, and two M5-branes in M-theory in which M2-charges are teleported. This is realized by anomaly inflow into these objects in the presence of cubic Chern-Simons terms. In particular, the Witten effect on magnetic monopoles can be understood as a general consequence of anomaly inflow, which implies that some anomalous…
Axial and gravitational anomaly of field theories, when embedded in string theory, must be accompanied by canceling inflow. We give a self-contained overview for various world-volume theories, and clarify the role of smeared magnetic sources in I-brane/D-brane cases. The proper anomaly descent of the source, as demanded by regularity of RR field strengths H's, turns out to be an essential ingredient. We show how this allows correct inflow to be generated for all such theories, including self-dual cases, and also that the mechanism is now insensitive to the choice between the two related but in…
We derive the anomaly polynomials of 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ theories that are obtained by wrapping M5-branes on a Riemann surface with arbitrary regular punctures, using anomaly inflow in the corresponding M-theory setup. Our results match the known anomaly polynomials for the 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ class $\mathcal{S}$ SCFTs. In our approach, the contributions to the 't Hooft anomalies due to boundary conditions at the punctures are determined entirely by $G_4$-flux in the 11d geometry. This computation provides a top-down derivation of these contributions that utilizes the geometric definition of the…
Topological defects constructed out of scalar fields and possessing chiral fermion zero modes are known to exhibit an anomaly inflow mechanism which cancels the anomaly in the effective theory of the zero modes through an inflow of current from the space in which the defect is embedded. We investigate the analog of this mechanism for defects constructed out of gauge fields in higher dimensions. In particular we analyze this mechanism for string (one-brane) defects in six dimensions and for fivebranes in ten dimensions.}
Anomaly cancellation for M-theory fivebranes requires the introduction of a "bump-form" which smoothes out the five-brane source. We discuss the physical origin of this bump-form in the simpler case of axion strings in 3+1 dimensions and construct it in terms of the radial profile of the fermion zero modes. Our treatment allows for a clearer understanding of the role played by covariant rather than consistent anomalies when anomalies are canceled by inflow from the bulk. We briefly discuss the generalization of these results to fivebrane anomalies in M theory.
We extend the anomaly inflow methods developed in M-theory to SCFTs engineered via D3-branes in type IIB. We show that the 't Hooft anomalies of such SCFTs can be computed systematically from their geometric definition. Our procedure is tested in several 4d examples and applied to 2d theories obtained by wrapping D3-branes on a Riemann surface. In particular, we show how to analyze half-BPS regular punctures for 4d $\mathcal N = 4$ SYM on a Riemann surface. We discuss generalizations of this formalism to type IIB configurations with $F_3$, $H_3$ fluxes, as well as to F-theory setups.
We study intersecting D-brane models, that describe at low energies a two dimensional chiral fermion theory localized at the intersection. The fermions are coupled to gauge fields in the bulk. The resulting low energy theory is equivalent to the Gross-Neveu model with dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. No Nambu-Goldstone boson associated with spontaneously broken symmetries appears in two dimensional field theories. In the present work we discuss solvable models with the same basic dynamics of the dual Gross-Neveu model. The disappearance of the Nambu-Goldstone boson is obtained from D-brane …
We apply the Callan-Harvey anomaly inflow mechanism to the study of QCD (chromoelectric) flux tubes, quark (pair)-creation and chiral magnetic effect, using new variables from the Cho-Faddeev-Niemi decomposition of the gauge potential. A phenomenological description of chromoelectric flux tubes is obtained by studying a gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio effective Lagrangian, derived from the original QCD Lagrangian. At the quantum level, quark condensates in the QCD vacuum may form a vortex-like structure in a chromoelectric flux tube. Quark zero modes trapped in the vortex are chiral and lead to a tw…
We study the chiral effective theory in the presence of QCD vortices. Gauge invariance requires novel terms from vortex singularities in the gauged Wess-Zumino-Witten action, which incorporate anomaly induced currents along the vortices. We examine these terms for systems with QCD axial domain-walls bounded by vortices (vortons) under magnetic fields. We discuss how the baryon and the electric charge conservations are satisfied in these systems through interplay between domain-walls and vortices, which manifests Callan-Harvey's mechanism of the anomaly inflow.
It is shown that the anomaly inflow mechanism can be implemented using Wilson line in odd dimensional gauge theories. An action of Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) type can be constructed using Wilson line. The action is understood in the odd dimensional bulk space-time rather than in the even dimensional boundary. This action is not gauge invariant. It gives anomalous gauge variations of the consistent form on boundary space-times. So it can be used to cancel the quantum anomalies localized on boundary space-times. This offers a new way to cancel the gauge anomaly and construct anomaly-free gauge the…
We examine some six-dimensional orientifold models with $N = 1$ supersymmetry, which can be realised as intersecting 7-branes and 7-planes. These models are studied in the light of recent work showing that orientifold planes carry anomalous gravitational couplings on their world-volume. We show that gravitational anomalies can be locally cancelled by these new couplings at every point in the internal space, under the assumption that the anomaly residing on orientifold planes is distributed in a particular way among brane-plane and plane-plane intersections.
Perturbative fermion anomalies in spacetime dimension $d$ have a well-known relation to Chern-Simons functions in dimension $D=d+1$. This relationship is manifested in a beautiful way in "anomaly inflow" from the bulk of a system to its boundary. Along with perturbative anomalies, fermions also have global or nonperturbative anomalies, which can be incorporated by using the $η$-invariant of Atiyah, Patodi, and Singer instead of the Chern-Simons function. Here we give a nonperturbative description of anomaly inflow, involving the $η$-invariant. This formula has been expected in the past based o…
We consider the 6d (1,0) SCFT on a stack of $N$ M5-branes probing a $\mathbb C^2/\mathbb Z_2$ singularity. In particular, we study its compactifications to four dimensions on a smooth genus-$g$ Riemann surface with non-trivial flavor flux, yielding a family of 4d CFTs. By tracking the M-theory origin of the global symmetries of the 4d CFTs, we detect the emergence of an accidental symmetry and the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a $U(1)$ generator. These effects are visible from geometric considerations and not apparent from the point of view of the compactification of the 6d field theory. Th…
We study the 't Hooft anomalies of four-dimensional superconformal field theories that arise from M5-branes wrapped on a punctured Riemann surface. In general there are two independent contributions to the anomalies. There is a bulk term obtained by integrating the anomaly polynomial of the world-volume theory on the M5-branes over the Riemann surface; this contribution knows about the punctures only through its dependence on the Euler characteristic of the surface. The second set of contributions comes from local data at the punctures; these terms are independent from the bulk data of the sur…
We study fermion localization in gauge theory space. We consider four dimensional product gauge groups in which light chiral fermions transform under different gauge factors of the product group. This construction provides a suppression of higher dimensional operators. For example, it can be used to suppress dangerous proton decay operators. The anomalies associated with the light chiral fermions are compensated by Wess-Zumino terms, which in the continuum limit reproduce the five dimensional Chern-Simons term.
We study the physics of quark deconfinement on domain walls in four-dimensional supersymmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills theory, compactified on a small circle with supersymmetric boundary conditions. We numerically examine the properties of BPS domain walls connecting vacua k units apart. We also determine their electric fluxes and use the results to show that Wilson loops of any nonzero N-ality exhibit perimeter law on all k-walls. Our results confirm and extend, to all N and k, the validity of the semiclassical picture of deconfinement of Anber, Sulejmanpasic and one of us (EP), arXiv:1501.06773, pr…
We present a first principles derivation of the anomaly polynomials of 4d $\mathcal{N} = 2$ class $\mathcal{S}$ theories of type $A_{N-1}$ with arbitrary regular punctures, using anomaly inflow in the corresponding M-theory setup with $N$ M5-branes wrapping a punctured Riemann surface. The labeling of punctures in our approach follows entirely from the analysis of the 11d geometry and $G_4$ flux. We highlight the applications of the inflow method to the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Lower-dimensional (hyper)surfaces that can carry gauge or gauge/gravitational anomalies occur in many areas of physics: one-plus-one-dimensional boundaries or two-dimensional defect surfaces in condensed matter systems, four-dimensional brane-worlds in higher-dimensional cosmologies or various branes and orbifold planes in string or M-theory. In all cases we may have (quantum) anomalies localized on these hypersurfaces that are only cancelled by ``anomaly inflow'' from certain topological interactions in the bulk. Proper cancellation between these anomaly contributions of different origin requ…
The effective theory of rotating pion superfluid in the presence of topological defects will be considered. We study the anomaly induced effects and the interplay between domain-wall and superfluid vortex under rotation. A non-uniform rotation leads to new effects in the domain-wall and vortex system. It will be shown that the effective theory predicts radial current flows of charges in the system whereas the previously studied cases dealt with induced static charges. The main observation is that the radial flow consists of two parts which are related to the presence of gauge and gravitational…
In theories with chiral couplings, one of the important consistency requirements is that of the cancellation of a gauge anomaly. In particular, this is one of the conditions imposed on the hypercharges in the Standard Model. However, anomaly cancellation condition of the Standard Model looks unnatural from the perspective of a theory with extra dimensions. Indeed, if our world were embedded into an odd-dimensional space, then the full theory would be automatically anomaly free. In this paper we discuss the physical consequences of anomaly non-cancellation for effective 4-dimensional field theo…
In 1985, Callan and Harvey showed a view of gauge anomaly as a missing current into an extra-dimension, and the total contribution, including the Chern-Simons current in the bulk, is conserved. However in their computation, the edge and bulk contributions are separately evaluated and their cross correlations, which should be relevant at boundary, are simply ignored. This issue has been solved in many approaches. In this work, we revisit this issue with a complete set of eigenstates of free domain-wall Hamiltonian and give the systematic evaluation, easy to take in the higher mass correction an…
Whether two boundary conditions of a two-dimensional topological order can be continuously connected without a phase transition in between remains a challenging question. We tackle this challenge by constructing an effective Hamiltonian, describing anyon interaction, that realizes such a continuous deformation. At any point along the deformation, the model remains a fixed point model describing a gapped topological order with gapped boundaries. That the deformation retains the gap is due to the anomaly cancelation between the boundary and bulk. Such anomaly inflow is quantitatively studied usi…
We study the $η$-invariant of a Dirac operator on a manifold with boundary subject to local boundary conditions with the help of heat kernel methods. In even dimensions, we relate this invariant to $η$-invariants of a boundary Dirac operator, while in odd dimension, it is expressed through the index of boundary operators. We stress the necessity of the strong ellipticity condition for the applicability of our methods. We show that the Witten--Yonekura boundary conditions are not strongly elliptic, though they are very close to strongly elliptic ones.
Large $N_c$ and holographic arguments, as well as Monte Carlo results, suggest that the topological structure of the QCD vacuum is dominated by codimension-one membranes which appear as thin dipole layers of topological charge. Such membranes arise naturally as $D6$ branes in the holographic formulation of QCD based on IIA string theory. The polarizability of these membranes leads to a vacuum energy $\propto θ^2$, providing the origin of nonzero topological susceptibility. Here we show that the axial U(1) anomaly can be formulated as anomaly inflow on the brane surfaces. A 4D gauge transformat…
We derive a rigorous classification of topologically stable Fermi surfaces of non-interacting, discrete translation-invariant systems from electronic band theory, adiabatic evolution and their topological interpretations. For systems on an infinite crystal it is shown that there can only be topologically unstable Fermi surfaces. For systems on a half- space and with a gapped bulk, our derivation naturally yields a $\mathit{K}$-theory classification. Given the $d-1$-dimensional surface Brillouin zone $\mathrm{X}_{s}$ of a $d$-dimensional half-space, our result implies that different classes of …
We systematically study the anomaly inflow by the bulk Chern-Simons (CS) theory in a slice of five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime ($\text{AdS}_5$). The introduction of UV and IR 3-branes makes the anomaly story remarkably rich and many interesting aspects can be obtained, including weakly gauging and spontaneous symmetry breaking of the global symmetries of the dual 4D CFT. Our main contribution is to provide a unified and comprehensive discussion of the subject, together with a detailed description of the dual CFT picture for each case. Employing a gauge-fixed effective action suitable …
We derive the general form of the anomaly for chiral spinors and self-dual antisymmetric tensors living on D-brane and O-plane interesections, using both path-integral and index theorem methods. We then show that the anomalous couplings to RR forms of D-branes and O-planes in a general background are precisely those required to cancel these anomalies through the inflow mechanism. This allows, for instance, for local anomaly cancellation in generic orientifold models, the relevant Green-Schwarz term being given by the sum of the anomalous couplings of all the D-branes and O-planes in the model.
We study entanglement entropy for parity-violating (time-reversal breaking) quantum field theories on $\mathbb{R}^{1,2}$ in the presence of a domain wall between two distinct parity-odd phases. The domain wall hosts a 1+1-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) with non-trivial chiral central charge. Such a CFT possesses gravitational anomalies. It has been shown recently that, as a consequence, its intrinsic entanglement entropy is sensitive to Lorentz boosts around the entangling surface. Here, we show using various methods that the entanglement entropy of the three-dimensional bulk theory …
We discuss the physics of zero modes of ED3/M5 instantons at strong coupling from three different viewpoints. Motivated by an anomaly inflow argument, we give a prescription for describing neutral instanton modes in terms of string junctions, unifying the language with that used for charged modes. We proceed to discuss the physics of charged modes as we move between different points in the moduli space of F-theory compactified on K3. In particular, we show how, in going from the E6^3 point to the SO(8)^4 point, the structure of SO(8) zero modes arises from a non-trivial mixing of massless 27's…
We investigate the effect of $U (1)$ gauge field on lattice fermion systems with a curved domain-wall mass term. In the same way as the conventional flat domain-wall fermion, the chiral edge modes appear localized at the wall, whose Dirac operator contains the induced gravitational potential as well as the $U(1)$ vector potential. In the case of $S^1$ domain-wall fermion on a two-dimensional flat lattice, we find a competition between the Aharonov-Bohm(AB) effect and gravitational gap in the Dirac eigenvalue spectrum, which leads to anomaly of the time-reversal ($T$) symmetry. Our numerical re…
We show that the anomalous couplings of $D$-brane gauge and gravitational fields to Ramond-Ramond tensor potentials can be deduced by a simple anomaly inflow argument applied to intersecting $D$-branes and use this to determine the eight-form gravitational coupling.
We analyse a system of arbitrarily intersecting D-branes in ten-dimensional supergravity. Chiral anomalies are supported on the intersection branes, called I-branes. For non-transversal intersections anomaly cancellation has been realized until now only cohomologically but not locally, due to short-distance singularities. In this paper we present a consistent local cancellation mechanism, writing the delta-like brane currents as differentials of the recently introduced Chern--kernels, J=dK. In particular, for the first time we achieve anomaly cancellation for dual pairs of D-branes. The Chern-…
We obtain the anomaly polynomial of strings of general 6d $\mathcal{N}{=}(1,0)$ theories in terms of anomaly inflow. Our computation sheds some light on the reason why the simplest 6d $\mathcal{N}{=}(1,0)$ theory has $E_8$ flavor symmetry, and also partially explains a curious numerology in F-theory.
We revisit 't Hooft anomalies in (1+1)$d$ non-spin quantum field theory, starting from the consistency and locality conditions, and find that consistent U(1) and gravitational anomalies cannot always be canceled by properly quantized (2+1)$d$ classical Chern-Simons actions. On the one hand, we prove that certain exotic anomalies can only be realized by non-reflection-positive or non-compact theories; on the other hand, without insisting on reflection-positivity, the exotic anomalies present a caveat to the inflow paradigm. For the mixed U(1) gravitational anomaly, we propose an inflow mechanis…
Anomaly inflow for CSS and fractonic lattice models and dualities via cluster state measurement
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo（东京大学大学院人文社会系研究科）；C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics & Department of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York at Stony Brook（纽约州立大学石溪分校陈省身理论物理研究所及物理与天文学系）
We consider the hydrodynamic regime of a 2+1 dimensions QFT with the parity anomaly. Beyond the known constraints from positivity of entropy production, we show that the anomaly inflow mechanism, from a corresponding bulk SPT phase, together with thermodynamic consistency of equilibrium partition functions, restricts the form of non-dissipative transport coefficients. This included the known form of quantised Hall conductivity, which is fixed to be $σ_{xy} = e^2/2h$, along with new constraints on other three non-dissipative parity-odd transport coefficients.
Smooth manifolds of G_2 holonomy, used to compactify M-theory to four dimensions, give only abelian gauge groups without charged matter multiplets. But singular G_2-manifolds can give abelian or nonabelian gauge groups with chiral fermions. We describe the mechanism of anomaly cancellation in these models, which depends upon anomaly inflow from the bulk. We also compare the anomaly predictions to what has been learned by more explicit arguments in some special cases.
We describe a method to determine the anomaly polynomials of general 6d $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ and $\mathcal{N}=(1,0)$ SCFTs, in terms of the anomaly matching on their tensor branches. This method is almost purely field theoretical, and can be applied to all known 6d SCFTs. We demonstrate our method in many concrete examples, including $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ theories of arbitrary type and the theories on M5 branes on ALE singularities, reproducing the $N^3$ behavior. We check the results against the anomaly polynomials computed M-theoretically via the anomaly inflow.
We show that the gauge, gravitational (tangent-bundle) and their mixed anomalies arising from the localized modes near a 5-brane in the SO(32) heterotic string theory cancel with the anomaly inflow from the bulk with the use of the Green-Schwarz mechanism on the brane, similarly to the E_8 x E_8 5-brane case. We also compare our result with Mourad's analysis performed in the small-instanton limit.
We study the instanton partition functions of two well-known superconformal field theories with mass deformations. Two types of anomaly equations, namely, the modular anomaly and holomorphic anomaly, have been discovered in the literature. We provide a clean solution to the long standing puzzle about their precise relation, and obtain some universal formulas. We show that the partition function is invariant under the SL(2,Z) duality which exchanges theories at strong coupling with those of weak coupling.
We revisit quantum field theory anomalies, emphasizing the interplay with diffeomorphisms and supersymmetry. The Ward identities of the latter induce Noether currents of all continuous symmetries, and we point out how these consistent currents are replaced by their covariant form through the appearance of the Bardeen-Zumino currents, which play a central role in our study. For supersymmetry Ward identities, two systematic methods for solving the Wess-Zumino consistency conditions are discussed: anomaly inflow and anomaly descent. The simplest inflows are from supersymmetric Chern-Simons action…
We point out an interesting analogy between the BTZ black hole and QHE (Quantum Hall effect) in the (2+1)-dimensional bulk/boundary theories. It is shown that the Chern-Simons/Liouville(Chern-Simons/chiral boson) is an effective description for the BTZ black hole (QHE). Also the IR(bulk)-UV(boundary) connection for a black hole information bound is realized as the UV(low-lying excitations on bulk)-IR(long-range excitations on boundary) connection in the QHE. An inflow of conformal anomaly($c=1$ central charge) onto the timelike boundary of AdS$_3$ by the Noether current corresponds to an inflo…
Sufficient conditions are proven for 't Hooft's consistency conditions to hold at points in the moduli space of supersymmetric gauge theories. Known results for anomaly matching in supersymmetric QCD are rederived as a sample application of the results. The results can be used to show that the anomaly matching conditions hold for s-confining theories.
