A global anomaly from the Z-string

  • 3 February 1997
Abstract
The response of fermion fields to different backgrounds of essentially 2-dimensional boson fields in SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory is investigated. In particular, the spectral flow of energy eigenvalues is calculated for a non-contractible sphere of configurations passing through the vacuum and the Z-string (the embedded vortex solution). Also, a non-vanishing Berry phase is established for adiabatic transport "around" the Z-string. This implies the existence of a new type of global (non-perturbative) anomaly in chiral SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory. Possible extensions to other chiral gauge theories are also discussed.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: