BRST quantization of anomalous gauge theories

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how BRST quantization can be applied to gauge theories with anomalies by shifting anomalies to a trivial sector, enabling standard quantization methods.

Contribution

It introduces a method to apply BRST quantization to anomalous gauge theories by using the Wess-Zumino mechanism to handle anomalies.

Findings

BRST quantization can be extended to anomalous theories with anomaly shifting.

The trivial sector acts as a topological sector in the quantization process.

Standard BRST procedures are applicable after anomaly shifting.

Abstract

It is shown how the BRST quantization can be applied to a gauge invariant sector of theories with anomalously broken symmetries. This result is used to show that shifting the anomalies to a classically trivial sector of fields (Wess-Zumino mechanism) makes it possible to quantize the physical sector using a standard BRST procedure, as for a non anomalous theory. The trivial sector plays the role of a topological sector if the system is quantized without shifting the anomalies.