The anisotropic chiral boson

Abstract

We construct the theory of a chiral boson with anisotropic scaling, characterized by a dynamical exponent z that takes positive odd integer values. The action reduces to that of Floreanini and Jackiw in the isotropic case (z = 1). The standard free boson with Lifshitz scaling is recovered when both chiralities are nonlocally combined. Its canonical structure and symmetries are also analyzed. As in the isotropic case, the theory is also endowed with a current algebra. Noteworthy, the standard conformal symmetry is shown to be still present, but realized in a nonlocal way. The exact form of the partition function at finite temperature is obtained from the path integral, as well as from the trace over hat{u} (1) descendants. It is essentially given by the generating function of the number of partitions of an integer into z-th powers, being a well-known object in number theory. Thus, the asymptotic growth of the number of states at fixed energy, including subleading correc- tions, can be obtained from the appropriate extension of the renowned result of Hardy and Ramanujan.