Anomalous violation of conservation laws in Minkowski space

Abstract

We consider the evolution of quantum Fermi fields in Minkowski gauge field backgrounds. Our motivation is the study of anomalous fermion number violating processes. We derive selection rules for fermion scattering amplitudes which relate the violation of fermionic charge to the change in winding between early and late times of the vacuum part of the gauge field. We find that the amount of fermion number violation is always integer, even when the topological charge of the gauge field is fractional. As an explicit example, we apply our results to spherically symmetric Minkowski solutions.