Axial anomaly in nonlinear conformal electrodynamics

Abstract

We study the axial anomaly of Dirac spinors on gravitational instanton backgrounds in the context of nonlinear electrodynamics. In order to do so, we consider Einstein gravity minimally coupled to a recently proposed conformal electrodynamics that enjoys duality transformation invariance. These symmetries allow us to generalize the Eguchi-Hanson configuration while preserving its geometry. We then compute the Dirac index of the nonlinearly charged Eguchi-Hanson and Taub-NUT configurations. We find that there is an excess of positive chiral Dirac fermions over the negative ones which triggers the anomaly.