Harada-Tsutsui Gauge Recovery Procedure: From Abelian Gauge Anomalies to the Stueckelberg Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper revisits Harada-Tsutsui's gauge recovery method, showing two ways to restore gauge invariance—one preserving anomalies and another making the theory anomaly-free, linking the Stueckelberg mechanism with gauge invariant formulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates a new interpretation of the Harada-Tsutsui technique, connecting gauge invariant maps to the Stueckelberg mechanism and providing two methods to recover gauge symmetry.

Findings

Two gauge recovery methods: anomaly-preserving and anomaly-free.

Identification of the gauge invariant Proca model with the Stueckelberg model.

Generalization of the Stueckelberg mechanism through gauge invariant maps.

Abstract

Revisiting a path-integral procedure of recovering gauge invariance from anomalous effective actions developed by Harada and Tsutsui, it is shown that there are two ways to achieve gauge symmetry: one already presented by the authors, which is shown to preserve the anomaly in the sense of standard conservation law, and another one which is anomaly-free, preserving current conservation. It is also shown that the aplication of Harada-Tsutsui technique to other models which are not anomalous but do not exhibit gauge invariance allows the identification of the gauge invariant formulation of the Proca model, also done by the referred authors, with the Stueckelberg model, leading to the interpretation of the gauge invariant map as a generalization of the Stueckelberg mechanism.