Chiral bosons

Abstract

The local lagrangian formulation for chiral bosons recently suggested by Floreanini and Jackiw is analyzed. We quantize the system and explain how the unconventional Poincaré generators of left and right chiral bosons combine to form the standard generators. The left-U(1) Kac-Moody algebra and the left-Virasoro algebra are shown to be the same as for left Weyl fermions. We compare the partition functions, on the torus, of a chiral boson and a chiral fermion. The left-moving boson is coupled to gauge fields producing the same anomalies as in the fermionic formulation. It is pointed out that the unconventional Lorentz transformations are inapplicable for the coupled system and a set of different transformations is presented. A coupling to gravity is proposed. We present the theory of chiral bosons on a group manifold, the chiral WZW model. The (1,0) supersymmetric abelian and non-abelian chiral bosons are described.