Fermi condensation is usually a phenomena of strongly correlated system. In this letter, we point out a novel mechanism for condensation of Dirac fermions due to Weyl anomaly. The condensation has its physical origin in the nontrivial response of the fermion vacuum to changes in the background spacetime (either boundary location or the background metric), and can be felt when a background scalar field is turned on. The scalar field can be, for example, the Higgs field in a fundamental theory or the phonon in condensed matter system. For a spacetime with boundaries, the induced Fermi condensate is inversely proportional to the proper distance from the boundary. For a conformally flat spacetime without boundaries, Fermi condensation depends on the conformal factor and its derivatives. We also generalize the Banks-Casher relation which relates the Fermi condensate to the zero mode density of the Dirac operator to a local form. Due to its universal nature, this anomaly induced Fermi condensate can be expected to have a wide range of applications in physics.
The Weyl anomaly problem is treated within a purely geometrical context. Arguments are given that hint at a possible classical origin of the conformal anomaly in the Riemannian nature of the background geometry where the matter fields play out their dynamics. Some considerations allowing for a possible resolution of the Weyl anomaly problem are briefly outlined. Following the spirit of the standard model of the fundamental interactions, it is argued that the Weyl anomaly should be a consequence of the breaking of the gauge symmetry at some stage during the evolution of the universe.
Recently a generalization of the Fefferman-Graham gauge for asymptotically locally AdS spacetimes, called the Weyl-Fefferman-Graham (WFG) gauge, has been proposed. It was shown that the WFG gauge induces a Weyl geometry on the conformal boundary. The Weyl geometry consists of a metric and a Weyl connection. Thus, this is a useful setting for studying dual field theories with background Weyl symmetry. Working in the WFG formalism, we find the generalization of obstruction tensors, which are Weyl-covariant tensors that appear as poles in the Fefferman-Graham expansion of the bulk metric for even…
Recently it is found that, due to Weyl anomaly, a background scalar field induces a non-trivial Fermi condensation for theories with Yukawa couplings. For simplicity, the paper consider only scalar type Yukawa coupling and, in the BCFT case, only for a specific boundary condition. In these cases, the Weyl anomaly takes on a simple special form. In this paper, we generalize the results to more general situations. First, we obtain general expressions of Weyl anomaly due to a background scalar and pseudo scalar field in general 4d BCFTs. Then, we derive the general form of Fermi condensation from…
In this paper, we investigate Casimir effect, Weyl anomaly and displacement operator for boundary conformal field theory in general dimensions. We find universal relations between them. In particular, they are all determined by the central charge of boundary conformal field theory. We verify these relations by studying free BCFTs and holographic BCFTs. As a byproduct, we obtain the holographic two point function of stress tensor when the bulk boundary is perpendicular to the AdS boundary.
Recently it is found that Weyl anomaly leads to new anomalous currents in an external electromagnetic field in the curved spacetime. For simplicity, the initial works mainly focus on weak gravitational fields and the anomalous current is obtained for conformally flat spaces with small scale factors. In this paper, we generalize the results to the case with arbitrary scale factors. Firstly, we derive the transformation law of current under Weyl transformation, from which one can read off the anomalous current in general conformally flat spaces. Secondly, by using the Weyl transformation of curr…
In 1973 two Salam protégés (Derek Capper and the author) discovered that the conformal invariance under Weyl rescalings of the metric tensor $g_{μν}(x)\rightarrowΩ^2(x)g_{μν}(x)$ displayed by classical massless field systems in interaction with gravity no longer survives in the quantum theory. Since then these Weyl anomalies have found a variety of applications in black hole physics, cosmology, string theory and statistical mechanics. We give a nostalgic review. (Talk given at the {\it Salamfest}, ICTP, Trieste, March 1993.)
We derive the Weyl anomaly in two dimensional space-time by considering the Dirac sea regularized some negatively counted formally bosonic extra species.In fact we calculate the trace of the energy-momentum tensor of the Dirac sea in a background gravitational field. It has to be regularized, since otherwise the Dirac sea is bottomless and thus causes divergence. The new regularization method consists in adding various massive species some of which are to be counted negative in the Dirac sea.The mass term in the Lagrangian of the regularization fields have a dependence on the background gravit…
We revisit the computation of the trace anomaly for Weyl fermions using dimensional regularization. For a consistent treatment of the chiral gamma matrix $γ_*$ in dimensional regularization, we work in $n$ dimensions from the very beginning and use the Breitenlohner-Maison scheme to define $γ_*$. We show that the parity-odd contribution to the trace anomaly vanishes (for which the use of dimension-dependent identities is crucial), and that the parity-even contribution is half the one of a Dirac fermion. To arrive at this result, we compute the full renormalized expectation value of the fermion…
We study Weyl symmetry for non-relativistic conformal filed theories on curved spatial spaces, and calculate it's quantum anomaly. We show that there is no geometric anomaly, and the non-relativistic Weyl anomaly can appear only due to interaction. Also we study the anomaly by using the light-cone approach.
We calculate the conformal anomaly from 5d Weyl gravity (with broken conformal symmetry) which is conjectured to be supergravity dual to ${\cal N}=2$ superconformal field theory via AdS/CFT correspondence. Its comparison with ${\cal N}=2$ SCFT conformal anomaly (UV calculation) suggests that such duality may exist subject to presence of sub-leading 1/N corrections to cosmological and gravitational constants.
We consider possible ambiguities in the holographic Weyl anomaly that are caused by local terms in the flow equation. We point out that such ambiguities actually do not give physically meaningful contributions to the Weyl anomaly.
The relation between super-Virasoro anomaly and super-Weyl anomaly in $N=1$ NSR superstring coupled with 2D supergravity is investigated from canonical theoretical view point. The WZW action canceling the super-Virasoro anomaly is explicitly constructed. It is super-Weyl invariant but nonlocal functional of 2D supergravity. The nonlocality can be remedied by the super-Liouvlle action, which in turn recovers the super-Weyl anomaly. The final gravitational effective action turns out to be local but noncovariant super-Liouville action, describing the dynamical behavior of the super-Liouville fiel…
In CP-violating conformal field theories in four dimensions, the Pontryagin density can appear in the Weyl anomaly. The Pontryagin density in the Weyl anomaly is consistent, but it has a peculiar feature that the parent three-point function of the energy-momentum tensor can violate CP only (semi-)locally. In this paper, we study the supersymmetric completion of the Pontryagin density in the Weyl anomaly, where the central charge $c$ effectively becomes a complex number. The supersymmetry suggests that it accompanies the graviphoton $θ$ term associated with the R-symmetry gauging in the Weyl an…
We present a candidate of anomaly and Wess Zumino action of the two dimensional supergravity coupling with matters in a super-Weyl invariant regularization. It is a generalization of the Weyl and the area preserving \Diff invariant formulation of two dimensional gravity theory.
It was recently discovered that for a boundary system in the presence of a background magnetic field, the quantum fluctuation of the vacuum would create a non-uniform magnetization density for the vacuum and a magnetization current is induced in the vacuum. It was also shown that this "magnetic Casimir effect" of the vacuum is closely related to another quantum effect of the vacuum, the Weyl anomaly. Furthermore, the phenomena can be understood in terms of the holography of the boundary system. In this paper, we generalize this four dimensional effect to six dimensions. We use the AdS/BCFT hol…
Weyl Anomaly in the dilaton-scalar system in 2 dimensional gravity is examined. We take the heat-kernel regularization for the ultraviolet divergences. Generally the Weyl anomaly is determined by the 2nd order differential (elliptic) operator of the system and the definition of the measure. We have the freedom of the operator choice caused by the arbitrariness of total divergences (surface terms) in the action. We examine the Weyl anomaly in connection with such points and the hermiticity of the operator.
This note is a comment on some recent papers that have raised a controversy about the existence of the odd-parity trace anomaly in a four-dimensional theory of Weyl fermions. Without going into too technical details we explain why the methods employed in those papers cannot detect it.
A Coulomb impurity placed in an undoped Weyl semimetal spontaneously surrounds itself with a cloud of condensed Weyl fermions. We find that the ground-state of this system exhibits an experimentally accessible Landau zero-charge effect: the fermion condensate completely screens out the impurity charge. In a narrow band gap semiconducor this effect manifests itself in the near universality of observable charge of a highly-charged recombination center.
We examine the Weyl anomaly for a four-dimensional z=3 Lifshitz scalar coupled to Horava's theory of anisotropic gravity. We find a one-loop break-down of scale-invariance at second order in the gravitational background.
We propose a recipe - arguably the simplest - to compute the holographic type-B Weyl anomaly for general higher-derivative gravity in asymptotically AdS spacetimes. In 5 and 7 dimensions we identify a suitable basis of curvature invariants that allows to read off easily, without any further computation, the Weyl anomaly coefficients of the dual CFT. We tabulate the contributions from quadratic, cubic and quartic purely algebraic curvature invariants and also from terms involving derivatives of the curvature. We provide few examples, where the anomaly coefficients have been obtained by other me…
Considering arbitrary conformal field theories in general (non-conformally flat) backgrounds, we adopt a dimensional regularization approach to obtain stress tensors from Weyl anomalies. The results of type A anomaly-induced stress tensors in four and six-dimensions generalize the previous results calculated in a conformally flat background. On the other hand, regulators are needed to have well-defined type B anomaly-induced stress tensors. We also discuss ambiguities related to type D anomalies, Weyl invariants and order of limit issues.
Once we put a quantum field theory on a curved manifold, it is natural to further assume that coupling constants are position dependent. The position dependent coupling constants then provide an extra contribution to the Weyl anomaly so that we may attempt to cancel the entire Weyl anomaly on the curved manifold. We show that such a cancellation is possible for constant Weyl transformation or infinitesimal but generic Weyl transformation in two and four dimensional conformal field theories with exactly marginal deformations. When the Weyl scaling factor is annihilated by conformal powers of La…
We calculate the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion coupled to gravity by using Fujikawa's method supplemented by the choice of a consistent regulator. The latter is constructed out of Pauli-Villars regulating fields. The motivation for presenting such a calculation stems from recent studies that suggest that the trace anomaly of chiral fermions in four dimensions might contain an imaginary part proportional to the Pontryagin density. We find that the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion is given by half the trace anomaly of a Dirac fermion, so that no imaginary part proportional to the Pontryagin den…
We explore the connection between the holographic Weyl anomaly and the superconformal index in six-dimensional $(1,0)$ theories. Using earlier results from holographic computations of the $\mathcal O(1)$ contributions $δa$ and $δ(c-a)$ to the corresponding six-dimensional Weyl anomaly coefficients, we derive a pair of differential operators that extracts these values from the large-$N$ single-trace index. In doing so, we also highlight the structure of these corrections in terms of group theory invariants of the superconformal representations.
We show how to generalize the previous result of the monopole condensation in SU(2) QCD to SU(3) QCD. We present the gauge independent Weyl symmetric Abelian decomposition of the SU(3) QCD which decomposes the gluons to the color neutral neurons and the colored chromons. The decomposition allows us to separate the gauge invariant and parity conserving monopole background gauge independently, and reduces the non-Abelian gauge symmetry to a discrete color reflection symmetry which is easier to handle. With this we obtain the infra-red finite and gauge invariant integral expression of the one-loo…
We study the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion in an abelian gauge background. Although the presence of the chiral anomaly implies a breakdown of gauge invariance, we find that the trace anomaly can be cast in a gauge invariant form. In particular, we find that it does not contain any odd-parity contribution proportional to the Chern-Pontryagin density. The latter would be allowed by the consistency conditions. We perform our calculations using Pauli-Villars regularization and heat kernel methods. The issue is analogous to the one recently discussed in the literature about a conjectured contribu…
We review our calculation of the Weyl anomaly for d-dimensional conformal field theories that have a description in terms of a (d + 1)-dimensional gravity theory.
We compute the Weyl anomaly for an abelian Wilson surface by using a regularization that respects the gauge invariance. We then study the loop space on which lives a one-form connection. We restrict ourselves to the subsector consisting of only circular loops, and derive a Maxwell type action on this restricted loop space.
A Coulomb impurity placed in an undoped Weyl semimetal spontaneously surrounds itself with a cloud of condensed Weyl fermions. We study this system within the Thomas-Fermi approximation. We find that the ground-state of the system is electrically neutral and exhibits an experimentally accessible Landau zero-charge effect: the impurity charge is screened out at any finite distance in the limit of vanishing impurity size. Specifically, we show how in this limit the Thomas-Fermi equation for the electrostatic potential transforms into the Gell-Mann-Low equation for the charge.
An algorithm to obtain the Weyl anomaly in higher dimensions is presented. It is based on the heat-kernel method. Feynman rules, such as the vertex rule and the propagator rule, are given in (regularized) coordinate space. Graphical calculation is introduced. The 6 dimensional scalar-gravity theory is taken as an example, and its explicit result is obtained.
We compute the complete bulk one-loop contribution to the Weyl anomaly of the boundary theory for IIB Supergravity compactified on $ AdS_5\times S^5$. The result, that $δ{\cal A}=(E+I)/(2π^2)$, reproduces the subleading term in the exact expression ${\cal A}=-(N^2-1)(E+I)/(2π^2)$ for the Weyl anomaly of ${\cal N}=4$ Super-Yang-Mills theory, confirming the Maldacena conjecture. The anomaly receives contributions from all multiplets casting doubt on the possibility of describing the boundary theory beyond leading order in $N$ by a consistent truncation to the `massless' multiplet of IIB Supergra…
The behavior of the divergent part of the bulk AdS/CFT effective action is considered with respect to the special finite diffeomorphism transformations acting on the boundary as a Weyl transformation of the boundary metric. The resulting 1-cocycle of the Weyl group is in full agreement with the 1-cocycle of the Weyl group obtained from the cohomological consideration of the effective action of the corresponding CFT.
We calculate the magnetoconductivity of the Weyl semimetal with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and chiral anomaly utilizing the recently developed hydrodynamic theory. The system in question will be influenced by magnetic fields connected with ordinary Maxwell and the second $U(1)$-gauge field, which is responsible for anomalous topological charge. The presence of chiral anomaly and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ anomalous charge endow the system with new transport coefficients. We start with the linear perturbations of the hydrodynamic equations and calculate the magnetoconductivity of this system. The holographic …
We test the Maldacena conjecture for type IIB String Theory/ N=4 Yang-Mills by calculating the one-loop corrections in the bulk theory to the Weyl anomaly of the boundary CFT when the latter is coupled to a Ricci-flat metric. The contributions cancel within each supermultiplet, in agreement with the conjecture.
The quantum effective action for the electromagnetic field in an expanding universe has an anomalous dependence on the scale factor of the metric arising from virtual charged particles in the loops. It has been argued that this Weyl anomaly of quantum electrodynamics sources cosmological magnetic fields in the early universe. We examine this long-standing claim by using the effective action beyond the weak gravitational field limit which has recently been determined. We introduce a general criteria for assessing the quantumness of field fluctuations, and show that the Weyl anomaly is not able …
The Fermi liquid has an emergent low-energy symmetry that corresponds to charge conservation at each momentum on the Ferm surface. Recently Else, Thorngren and Senthil (ETS) argued that the emergent symmetry had a specific t'Hooft anomaly. We give a simple derivation of the ETS anomaly using the chiral anomaly of Weyl fermions.
We analyze time evolution of a spherically-symmetric collapsing matter from a point of view that black holes evaporate by nature. We consider conformal matters and solve the semi-classical Einstein equation $G_{μν}=8πG \langle T_{μν} \rangle$ by using the 4-dimensional Weyl anomaly with a large $c$ coefficient. Here $\langle T_{μν} \rangle$ contains the contribution from both the collapsing matter and Hawking radiation. The solution indicates that the collapsing matter forms a dense object and evaporates without horizon or singularity, and it has a surface but looks like an ordinary black hole…
We study the large source asymptotics of the generating functional in quantum field theory using the holographic renormalization group, and draw comparisons with the asymptotics of the Hopf characteristic function in fractal geometry. Based on the asymptotic behavior, we find a correspondence relating the Weyl anomaly and the fractal dimension of the Euclidean path integral measure. We are led to propose an equivalence between the logarithmic ultraviolet divergence of the Shannon entropy of this measure and the integrated Weyl anomaly, reminiscent of a known relation between logarithmic diverg…
We calculate the Weyl anomaly for conformal field theories that can be described via the adS/CFT correspondence. This entails regularizing the gravitational part of the corresponding supergravity action in a manner consistent with general covariance. Up to a constant, the anomaly only depends on the dimension d of the manifold on which the conformal field theory is defined. We present concrete expressions for the anomaly in the physically relevant cases d = 2, 4 and 6. In d = 2 we find for the central charge c = 3 l/ 2 G_N in agreement with considerations based on the asymptotic symmetry algeb…
The holographic Weyl anomaly for GJMS operators (or conformal powers of the Laplacian) are obtained in four and six dimensions. In the context of AdS/CFT correspondence, free conformal scalars with higher-derivative kinetic operators are induced by an ordinary second-derivative massive bulk scalar. At one-loop quantum level, the duality dictionary for partition functions entails an equality between the functional determinants of the corresponding kinetic operators and, in particular, it provides a holographic route to their Weyl anomalies. The heat kernel of a single bulk massive scalar field …
We show how the bosonic spectral action emerges from the fermionic action by the renormalization group flow in the presence of a dilaton and the Weyl anomaly. The induced action comes out to be basically the Chamseddine-Connes spectral action introduced in the context of noncommutative geometry. The entire spectral action describes gauge and Higgs fields coupled with gravity. We then consider the effective potential and show, that it has the desired features of a broken and an unbroken phase, with the roll down.
We give a complete account of the Schrödinger representation approach to the calculation of the Weyl anomaly of ${\cal N}=4$ SYM from the AdS/CFT correspondence. On the AdS side, the $1/N^2$ correction to the leading order result receives contributions from all the fields of Type IIB Supergravity, the contribution of each field being given by a universal formula. The correct matching with the CFT result is thus a highly non-trivial test of the correspondence.
Two dimensional field theories with Bondi-Metzner-Sachs symmetry have been proposed as duals to asymptotically flat spacetimes in three dimensions. These field theories are naturally defined on null surfaces and hence are conformal cousins of Carrollian theories, where the speed of light goes to zero. In this paper, we initiate an investigation of anomalies in these field theories. Specifically, we focus on the BMS equivalent of Weyl invariance and its breakdown in these field theories and derive an expression for Weyl anomaly. Considering the transformation of partition functions under this s…
We study some of the transport processes which are specific to an ideal gas of relativistic Weyl fermions and relate the corresponding transport coefficients to various anomaly coefficients of the system. We propose that these transport processes can be thought of as arising from the continuous injection of chiral states and their subsequent adiabatic flow driven by vorticity. This in turn leads to an elegant expression relating the anomaly induced transport coefficients to the anomaly polynomial of the Ideal Weyl gas.
We investigate analytically the properties of the Weyl holographic superconductor in the Lifshitz black hole background. We find that the critical temperature of the Weyl superconductor decreases with increasing Lifshitz dynamical exponent, $z$, indicating that condensation becomes difficult. In addition, it is found that the critical temperature and condensation operator could be affected by applying the Weyl coupling, $γ$. Moreover, we compute the critical magnetic field and investigate its dependence on the parameters $γ$ and $z$. Finally, we show numerically that the Weyl coupling paramete…
In the semiclassical analysis of black hole radiation in matter-coupled dilaton gravity, a one-parameter ``$k$"-family of measures for the path integral quantization of the matter fields is considered. The Weyl anomaly is proportional to the parameter $k$, but the black hole radiation seen by minkowskian observers at future null infinity is $k$-independent.
We present a first attempt to derive the full (type-A and type-B) Weyl anomaly of four dimensional conformal higher spin (CHS) fields in a holographic way. We obtain the type-A and type-B Weyl anomaly coefficients for the whole family of 4D CHS fields from the one-loop effective action for massless higher spin (MHS) Fronsdal fields evaluated on a 5D bulk Poincaré-Einstein metric with an Einstein metric on its conformal boundary. To gain access to the type-B anomaly coefficient we assume, for practical reasons, a Lichnerowicz-type coupling of the bulk Fronsdal fields with the bulk background We…
We compute $\mathcal O(1)$ corrections to the holographic Weyl anomaly for six-dimensional $\mathcal N=(1,0)$ and $(2,0)$ theories using the functional Schrödinger method that is conjectured to work for supersymmetric theories on Ricci-flat backgrounds. We show that these corrections vanish for long representations of the $\mathcal N=(1,0)$ theory, and we obtain an expression for $δ(c-a)$ for short representations with maximum spin two. We also confirm that the one-loop corrections to the $\mathcal N=(2,0)$ M5-brane theory are equal and opposite to the anomaly for the free tensor multiplet. Fi…
We consider the role of quantum effects, mainly, Weyl anomaly in modifying FLRW model singular behavior at early times. Weyl anomaly corrections to FLRW models have been considered in the past, here we reconsider this model and show the following: The singularity of this model is weak according to Tipler and Krolak, therefore, the spacetime might admit a geodesic extension. Weyl anomaly corrections changes the nature of the initial singularity from a big bang singularity to a sudden singularity. The two branches of solutions consistent with the semiclassical treatment form a disconnected manif…
We show that the asymptotic infinite dimensional enlarged gauge symmetries constructed for QED are anomalous in Dirac and Weyl semimetals. This symmetry is particularly important in particle physics for its analogy with the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) symmetries in gravity, as well as for its connection with QED soft IR theorems. This leads to observable effects, because of the induction of a new current in the material, which carries a memory of the BMS symmetry precursor.
Operators transform anomalously under the symmetry in the presence of quantum anomalies. We study this aspect of the super-Weyl anomaly in $\mathcal N=(1,1)$ superconformal field theories (SCFTs), in the context of AdS/CFT. In particular, we carry out holographic renormalization for $(1,1)$ pure AdS$_3$ supergravity that is supposed to be a gravity dual of the $\mathcal N=(1,1)$ SCFT, and derive holographic superconformal Ward identities with corresponding anomalies. We show that the obtained super-Weyl anomaly of the $\mathcal N=(1,1)$ SCFT induces a quantum correction term in the transformat…
We show that Weyl semimetals exhibit a mixed axial-torsional anomaly in the presence of axial torsion, a concept exclusive of these materials with no known natural fundamental interpretation in terms of the geometry of spacetime. This anomaly implies a nonconservation of the axial current---the difference in current of left- and right-handed chiral fermions---when the torsion of the spacetime in which the Weyl fermions move couples with opposite sign to different chiralities. The anomaly is activated by driving transverse sound waves through a Weyl semimetal with a spatially varying tilted dis…
This paper is a sequel to arXiv:1309.0785 were we computed the Weyl anomaly a-coefficient on d-sphere for higher-derivative conformal higher spin field in d=4 and shown that it matches the expression found in arXiv:1306.5242 by a "holographic" method from a ratio of massless higher spin determinants in AdS_5. Here we repeat the same computation on 6-sphere and demonstrate that the result agrees again with the one following from AdS_7. We also discuss explicitly similar matching in the d=2 case.
