Chiral conductivities and effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a 3D effective field theory to describe low-momentum static correlations in 4D quantum field theories with axial anomalies, analyzing radiative corrections to chiral conductivities in thermal equilibrium.

Contribution

It constructs a novel effective field theory framework capturing anomaly-induced transport phenomena and computes leading-order radiative corrections to chiral conductivities.

Findings

Radiative corrections affect all anomaly-induced transport except certain two-point functions.

The effective theory accurately reproduces static correlation functions in the presence of axial anomalies.

Some parity-violating conductivities are corrected by quantum effects, altering previous classical predictions.

Abstract

We construct the three-dimensional effective field theory which reproduces low-momentum static correlation functions in four-dimensional quantum field theories with U(1) axial anomalies and a dynamical vector gauge field, in thermal equilibrium. We compute radiative corrections to parity-violating chiral conductivities, to leading order in the effective theory. All of the anomaly-induced transport is susceptible to radiative corrections, except for certain two-point functions which are required by symmetry to vanish.