Fermionic representation of the Wess-Zumino term and the chiral Schwinger model

Abstract

The quantum structure of the chiral Schwinger model is studied by fermionization of the Wess-Zumino field. The model contains a hidden parameter a reflecting the ambiguity in the definition of the gauge anomaly. It is shown that, for the special value a = 2, this chiral model is equivalent to massless QED 2 in the sence that they share the same gauge field and the same (left-handed) chiral fermion. The fermionic representation of the Wess-Zumino term provides a natural way to summarize the current algebras and yields a regularization-independent current-algebraic characterization of the model.