More about the axial anomaly on the lattice Original Research Article

We study the axial anomaly defined on a finite-size lattice by using a Dirac operator which obeys the Ginsparg–Wilson relation. When the gauge group is U(1), we show that the basic structure of axial anomaly on the infinite lattice, which can be deduced by a cohomological analysis, persists even on (sufficiently large) finite-size lattices. For non-Abelian gauge groups, we propose a conjecture on a possible form of axial anomaly on the infinite lattice, which holds to all orders in perturbation theory. With this conjecture, we show that a structure of the axial anomaly on finite-size lattices is again basically identical to that on the infinite lattice. Our analysis with the Ginsparg–Wilson–Dirac operator indicates that, in appropriate frameworks, the basic structure of axial anomaly is quite robust and it persists even in a system with finite ultraviolet and infrared cutoffs.