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# 1 The International Gravitational Event Collaboration

## 1 The International Gravitational Event Collaboration

One of the most relevant scientific objectives for resonant detectors of gravitational waves (gw) is the search for short gw bursts, emitted during the gravitational collapse of stars or the final evolution of coalescing binaries.? To ensure the confidence of a detection, it is necessary to compare the observations made by multiple detectors with uncorrelated noise. This has already been done in the past years among pairs of cryogenic detectors with common time periods of observation of about a semester.?,? A few days of observation have been reported also for three simultaneously operating detectors.? In these attempts, the gw search consisted of a time coincidence analysis among the candidate signals reported by the different detectors and no statistically significant excess of coincidences was found.

An increase of the number of cryogenic resonant detectors in simultaneous operation in recent years has greatly improved the chance of making a confident detection of gw bursts. In fact, the International Gravitational Event Collaboration, IGEC, currently consists of the research groups operating the five cryogenic bar detectors ALLEGRO,? AURIGA,? EXPLORER,? NAUTILUS? and NIOBE.? The IGEC was established in July 1997 with an agreement? for setting up a common search for gravitational wave bursts of duration of the order of $`1ms`$. This agreement sets the guidelines for the data exchange procedure among the participating groups and the IGEC scientific policy, whose most relevant aspects are:

* each group has responsibility to make available to IGEC its list of candidate gravitational wave events,
* a unanimous agreement of the member groups is required to make public the results based on the IGEC data exchange,
* IGEC is open to new data taking research groups.

In 1999 the first IGEC analysis of the 1997-1998 data was performed and some initial results will be presented in the following sections. At the time of this analysis, not all the 1997-1998 data had been exchanged. Despite the incomplete data set, the simultaneous operation of four gravitational wave detectors was achieved for the first time.

### 1.1 Data exchange protocol

The IGEC data exchange procedure is aimed at searching for coincident excitations at different detectors. For each detector, a list of candidate events, each describing a $`\delta `$-like gravitational wave excitation of the detector, is provided by the corresponding research group. The IGEC protocol requires that in each list the candidate event rate be at most of the order of $`100/day`$, to limit the expected rate of accidental coincidences. Currently, the research groups have been exchanging event lists relative to the past three years, but a future goal is to implement an automatic exchange day by day.

The event lists are then made available to the IGEC collaboration as files under a common protocol,? open for future extensions. Under this protocol, it is mandatory for each detector to provide the minimum set of information needed to describe a $`\delta `$-like gw excitation of the detector for each event; namely its Universal Time of arrival, the Fourier component $`H_o`$ of its amplitude in $`Hz^1`$ and the detector noise level at that time. Another mandatory requirement is the declaration of the effective observation time of each detector, so that the IGEC observation time can be calculated. Optional information, such as the time of threshold crossing of the detector output, the duration of the event and its statistical compliance to a $`\delta `$-like gw excitation, can also be exchanged.

### 1.2 IGEC gravitational wave observatory

The relevant parameters of the five resonant bar detectors of the IGEC observatory in the years 1997-1998 are summarised in Table 1. The detectors are sensitive to gw signals in a typical bandwidth of the order of $`1Hz`$ around each one of the two resonances of the detector, which are close to $`700Hz`$ for NIOBE and close to $`900Hz`$ for all other detectors. The relationship between the Fourier amplitude $`H_0`$, averaged on the two resonant frequencies of the detector, and the energy $`E_s`$ deposited by the g.w. burst on the bar, is given by:

$$H_0=\frac{1}{4L_{bar}\nu _{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}\sqrt{E_s/M_{bar}}$$
(1)
where $`L_{bar}`$ is the bar length, $`M_{bar}`$ its mass, $`\nu _0`$ the mean of the detector resonance frequencies.

The typical thresholds used for selecting the events in the 1997-1998 burst search have been in the range $`H_026\times 10^{21}Hz^1`$. The corresponding strain amplitude of the gw can be computed assuming a model for the burst shape: for the conventional $`1ms`$ burst, the Fourier component $`H_0`$ should be multiplied by $`10^3Hz`$ to get the maximum strain amplitude $`h`$.

To maximise the chances of a coincidence detection, the bars have been oriented to be approximately parallel to one another. Neglecting the polarisation effects, the gw amplitude at the detector is $`H_0=H_{gw}sin^2\theta (t)`$, where $`H_{gw}`$ is the incident gw amplitude and $`\theta (t)`$ is the angle between the bar axis and the direction of the source. In this configuration of the observatory, the relative misalignments reported in Tab. 1 for ALLEGRO, AURIGA, EXPLORER and NAUTILUS disperse their $`sin^2\theta (t)`$ responses by at most a few %, while for NIOBE the dispersion is up to a few tenths. Figure 1 shows as an example the resulting amplitude efficiency for the observation of the Galactic Center as the Earth rotates. Since their values of $`sin^2\theta (t)`$ are simultaneously above 0.7 for about 60% of the time, we point out that this configuration of the observatory ensures a rather good and coherent coverage of the central galactic mass during time.

## 2 The Data Set

Each IGEC group independently developed a data acquisition and an optimum filtering procedure for a $`\delta `$-like gw excitation. These procedures differ greatly in the methods, in particular some of them filter for the energy released in the bar (ALLEGRO,? NIOBE?) while the others filter for the amplitude and phase of the strain excitation of the bar (AURIGA,? EXPLORER and NAUTILUS?). The output correlation time of the filters ranges from a few tenths up to a few seconds.

A search for maxima on the filter outputs is then used to identify the time and amplitude of the candidate events, which are exchanged only if their amplitude exceeds a selected threshold relative to the noise level. For the current detectors, these thresholds span in the range of signal-to-noise ratio $`SNR35`$ in amplitude. Of the events overcoming the threshold, some are rejected as spurious by different methods. AURIGA implements a $`\chi ^2`$ test on the compliance of the single detected excitations with the expected template of a gw burst.? In fact, the filtering procedure implemented is equivalent to a maximum likelihood fit of a signal model to the data and the goodness of the fit is statistically tested for each candidate event; those events not passing the test are rejected. All the other detectors implement spurious signals rejection using sensors of ambient disturbances. In addition, EXPLORER and NAUTILUS reject the events when the local noise is above a certain threshold.

The effective observation times for each detector has been defined by vetoing, a priori, time periods of detector maintenance or malfunctions and times when the detector was excited by the local environment as determined by the local experimentalists. After filtering, AURIGA implements a second level of vetoes a posteriori to reject further periods of unsatisfactory performance due to a lack of self consistency of its data analysis, that is when its noise fails to be compliant with the modeled one used to build its filtering procedure.?

The amplitude distributions of all the 1997-1998 exchanged events for each detector are shown in Fig.2. The effective observation time of the exchanged data up to now is summarised in Table 2, together with the mean rate of exchanged events. The net observation time with at least four, three and two detectors simultaneously operating has been respectively 15.5, 90 and 260 days. We expect that the three-way observation time will increase significantly as the exchanged data set will become complete. The ALLEGRO detector has been showing the best duty cycle, close to $`100\%`$ on the exchanged data period, as well as the most stationary noise performance with respect to the other detectors.

## 3 Analysis of Time Coincidences

A search for two, three and four-fold coincidences was carried out on the exchanged data. In the analysis reported here a $`M`$-fold coincidence is observed if the estimated arrival times $`t_i`$ at the $`M`$ detectors are all $`|t_it_j|1s`$. This figure has been chosen as a compromise between the demands for a small accidental background and for a low false dismissal probability. a new approach for multiple time coincidence analysis has been proposed by the Rome group.? In fact, the measured uncertainties $`t_w`$ on the estimated arrival times of a burst at each detector are quite similar and are selected to be $`\pm 0.5s`$. This corresponds to a maximum false dismissal of a few % for the exchanged events, even at low $`SNR`$. The maximum separation among coincident events is therefore set to $`2t_w=1s`$.

A preliminary search for three and four-fold coincidences shows none. A detailed analysis is in progress. The two-fold coincidences found for each pair of detectors are shown in Table 3: in all the cases they correspond to the estimated accidental background.

Two methods for estimating the rate of accidental coincidences have been applied for the pairs of detectors: i) performing several time shifts of events times of one detector with respect to the other and then looking for coincidences? (the resulting accidental coincidences are reported as $`<n_a>`$ in Tab.3); ii) assuming stationary Poisson distributions of event times and using the mean measured rates of events for each detector during the common observation time. The latter method predicts a number of accidental $`M`$-fold coincidences given by?

$$<n_a>_{theory}=M\frac{(2t_w)^{M1}}{T_{obs}^{M1}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}n_i,$$
(2)
where $`M`$ is the number of detectors, $`T_{obs}`$ their common observation time, $`t_w`$ the time window describing the timing accuracy of each detector, $`n_i`$ the number of exchanged candidate events of the $`i^{th}`$ detector during $`T_{obs}`$. The agreement of both estimates of the accidental background of coincidences is well within the statistical uncertainties for the detector pairs. In addition, the observed coincidences, $`n_c`$, correspond to both estimates of the accidental coincidence background. This implies that no excess coincidences were observed.

Using Eq.2, we also performed a preliminary analysis of the rates of accidental coincidences for three and four-fold configurations of the IGEC observatory. The most relevant result here is that the statistical significance of three-fold and four-fold time concidences among the current IGEC detectors improves by order of magnitudes.

## 4 Future Plans and Conclusions

This first IGEC joint analysis has shown that, with the current detector performances and the selected coincidence time window, at least three detectors simultaneously operating can perform an autonomous search for gw bursts with a very low false alarm rate even at signal-to-noise ratio as low as $`35`$ in single detectors. Therefore, the continuation of the IGEC international effort is very strongly motivated. Moreover, the joint work of the participating groups has instigated efforts to co-ordinate data analysis techniques between the different groups.

No coincidence above the expected accidental background were found in this preliminary analysis. Work is in progress to complete the analysis to three and four-fold coincidences, as well as to set upper limits on the rate of incoming gw bursts and on the amplitude of single gw bursts associated with selected time windows of astrophysical interest.

Improvements in the detector performances will lead to increase the sensitivity of the IGEC observatory in two respects. On one side the thresholds for gw burst search will be lowered without increasing the level of the accidental background rate. On the other side the effective bandwidths of the detectors will be also widened, thus decreasing the uncertainty in the estimated arrival time of a gw burst. The latter will allow the lowering of the rate of accidental coincidences and, above all, it will give the opportunity to measure the propagation speed and direction of the incoming gw.

In this framework, we think that the participation within the IGEC observatory of the interferometric detectors as they will begin observations would constitute a very important stage towards the establishment of the future worldwide observatory for gravitational waves.

Acknowledgements

The ALLEGRO group was supported by the National Science Foundation and LSO, the NIOBE group by the Australian Research Council. The Italian groups were supported in part by a grant from MURST-COFIN’97. The Rome group thanks F.Campolungo, G.Federici, R.Lenci, G.Martinelli, E.Serrani, R.Simonetti and F.Tabacchioni for their precious technical assistance.

References


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# Anomalies and symmetries of the regularized action

## I Introduction

Anomalies are one of the most stricking manifestations of the presence of ultraviolet infinities in quantum field theory phenomena. They have important consequences for the quantum consistency (unitarity and renormalizability) of different models, as well as for the study of the theoretical structure of quantum field theory, providing interesting relations with mathematical objects.

The regularization of a theory is a procedure with, by its very definition, produces a violent modification in its large momentum behaviour. Anomalies arise when this modification, whatever the particular regularization method applied, violates a classical symmetry. In the resulting renormalized quantum field theory, the quantum counterpart of that symmetry becomes ‘anomalous’. In particular, continuum symmetries will no longer lead to the conservation of a current, thus modifying the naive Ward identities.

In the functional integral representation, anomalies are usually attributed to the fact that, while the classical action is invariant under a given symmetry transformation, the integration measure is not. When performing a change of variables associated to the classical symmetry, the Jacobian of the transformation is, due to ultraviolet divergences, not well defined. When carefully evaluated, by introducing a proper regularization, this Jacobian gives rise to an anomalous term in the effective action , or, depending on the context, to anomalous Ward identities.

In this approach, the symmetry transformations are implemented on the unregularized action, which is formally invariant, and the regularization is only implemented afterwards, when computing the Jacobian The regularization of this Jacobian is of course related to the definition of the integration measure. of the transformation. It is worth remarking that the unregularized action contains field components at all the momentum scales, in particular the ones that are above the cutoff. To avoid this unpleasant feature, we shall start by considering the regularized action, and restrict our study to transformations that leave this functional invariant. Of course, we shall impose the constraint that the resulting transformations should tend to the usual ones when the cutoff is removed. Also, due to the fact that they avoid the large momentum modes, they will necessarily have to be non local, although in a scale of the order of the inverse of the cutoff.

As a particularly convenient form of the regularized action, which we will use in this note, we shall introduce a set of Pauli-Villars regulator fields, with carefully tunned masses $`M_i`$ that tend to infinity at the end of the calculation. Due to the presence of the regulator masses, the regularized action will be no longer invariant under some the classical symmetries, namely, those that rely on the masslessness of the fields in the action.

In the present letter, we will point out that this regularized action does have a generalized, non local symmetry, that reproduces the classical symmetry in the limit $`M_i\mathrm{}`$. Moreover, when performing a change of variables in the path integral based on this symmetry, the associated Jacobian is finite, reproducing the anomalous term in the effective action, when the cutoff tends to infinity.

In section II we discuss this procedure in detail for the gravitational conformal anomaly of a massless real scalar field in $`1+1`$ dimensions. We exhibit the explicit form of the non local symmetry of the regularized action and compute the conformal anomaly, which of course agrees with the Liouville action , . In section III we consider massless fermions in $`1+1`$ dimensions coupled to the electromagnetic field. Again we present a generalized chiral symmetry of the regularized action and compute the chiral anomaly. Section IV contains our conclusions.

## II The conformal anomaly in $`1+1`$ dimensions

In this section we shall consider the partition function $`𝒵[g_{\mu \nu }]`$, corresponding to a massless scalar field in the presence of an external gravitational background in $`1+1`$ dimensions:

$$𝒵[g_{\mu \nu }]=[𝒟\phi ]_ge^{iS[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }]}$$
(1)
where

$$S[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }]=\frac{1}{2}d^2x\sqrt{g}g^{\mu \nu }_\mu \phi _\nu \phi $$
(2)
and $`g=det(g_{\mu \nu })`$. In Eq. (1) we have made it explicit the fact that the definition of the scalar field integration measure depends upon the background metric $`g_{\mu \nu }`$.

The classical action $`S[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }]`$ is invariant under Weyl transformations of the metric:

$$g_{\mu \nu }g_{\mu \nu }^\omega (x)=\omega (x)g_{\mu \nu }(x)$$
(3)
$$S[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }^\omega ]=S[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }]$$
(4)
for any (strictly positive) $`\omega (x)`$. In adequate coordinates, any metric in two dimensions is conformally flat:

$$g_{\mu \nu }=e^{\sigma (x)}\eta _{\mu \nu }$$
(5)
where $`\eta _{\mu \nu }=\mathrm{diag}(1,1)`$ denotes the flat Minkowski metric. The classical dynamics of a scalar field in a gravitational background in $`1+1`$ dimensions is therefore trivial:

$$S[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }]=S[\phi ,\eta _{\mu \nu }]=\frac{1}{2}d^2x\eta ^{\mu \nu }_\mu \phi _\nu \phi .$$
(6)
This conclusion does not hold true, of course, for the quantum dynamics, the reason being the existence of the conformal or trace anomaly, which spoils the symmetry under the transformations (3) and produces a non vanishing trace in the energy momentum tensor .

In the usual setting, one derives the quantum effects by dealing with the vacuum functional (1). Under a Weyl transformation (3), and using the property (4), we see that

$$𝒵[g_{\mu \nu }^\omega ]=[𝒟\phi ]_{g^\omega }e^{iS[\phi ,g_{\mu \nu }]}.$$
(7)
Namely, any possible quantum effect must come from the non-invariance of the integration measure under Weyl transformations of the metric.

As shown by Polyakov  \- , there is, indeed, an anomalous Jacobian, the exponential of the Liouville action

$$[𝒟\phi ]_{g^\omega }=[𝒟\phi ]_gJ[\sigma ]=[𝒟\phi ]_g\mathrm{exp}i𝒜[g_{\mu \nu },w]$$
(8)
where $`𝒜[g_{\mu \nu },w]`$ is the anomaly, a local functional of $`g_{\mu \nu }`$.

By using the decomposition (5), and normalizing $`𝒵`$ such that $`𝒵[\eta _{\mu \nu }]=1`$, one also sees that

$$𝒵[g_{\mu \nu }]=J[\sigma ]=\mathrm{exp}i𝒜[w],$$
(9)
where $`𝒜[w]𝒜[\eta _{\mu \nu },w]`$ is given by

$$𝒜[w]=\frac{1}{96\pi }d^2x\frac{1}{w^2}_\mu w^\mu w.$$
(10)
As can be easily proved from the perturbative derivation of the anomaly given in Ref. , when the system consists of $`d`$ bosonic scalar fields and $`\overline{d}`$ Grassmann scalar fields the Jacobian becomes $`J[\sigma ]=\mathrm{exp}i(d\overline{d})𝒜[g,w]`$.

In what follows we will show that, if one works with the regularized action rather than the classical action $`S[\phi ,g]`$, there is a non local symmetry, and one can compute the anomaly as the Jacobian associated to a non local redefinition of the fields. The Pauli-Villars method, first applied to this system in , amounts to the introduction of three ‘regulator fields’ $`\overline{\chi },\chi ,\eta `$ and a cutoff $`M`$ so that

$$S^{reg}[\phi ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,\eta ,g_{\mu \nu },M]=\frac{1}{2}d^2x\sqrt{g}(g^{\mu \nu }_\mu \phi _\nu \phi +g^{\mu \nu }_\mu \overline{\chi }_\nu \chi M^2\overline{\chi }\chi $$

$$+g^{\mu \nu }_\mu \eta _\nu \eta 2M^2\eta ^2)$$
(11)
where $`\overline{\chi },\chi `$ are complex Grassmann fields, while $`\eta `$ is a real scalar field. The number and massess of the regulators are just right to make the vacuum energy in a non-trivial background finite. For the sake of convenience, we rewrite (11) in a more compact form as follows:

$$S^{reg}[\phi ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,\eta ,g_{\mu \nu },M]=\frac{1}{2}\left[\phi |\mathrm{}^{}|\phi +\overline{\chi }|(\mathrm{}^{}+M^2\sqrt{g})|\chi +\eta |(\mathrm{}^{}+2M^2\sqrt{g})|\eta \right]$$
(12)
where

$$\mathrm{}^{}=\sqrt{g}\mathrm{}=_\mu \sqrt{g}g^{\mu \nu }_\nu $$
(13)
and $`\mathrm{}`$ is the usual curved space Laplacian operator $`\mathrm{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}_\mu \sqrt{g}g^{\mu \nu }_\nu `$. We used a Dirac braket like notation for the scalar product in flat two dimensional spacetime:

$$\varphi _1|\varphi _2=d^2x\varphi _1(x)\varphi _2(x),$$
(14)
which is convenient, since we have absorbed the factor $`\sqrt{g}`$ of the measure in the operators. It is worth noting that both $`\mathrm{}^{}`$ and $`\sqrt{g}`$ are symmetric (real Hermitian) operators for the scalar product (14). Also, $`\mathrm{}^{}`$ is explicitly invariant under Weyl transformations.

Due to the presence of the mass terms for the regulator fields, it is evident that the regularized action is not invariant under Weyl transformations of the metric tensor:

$$S^{reg}[\phi ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,\eta ,g_{\mu \nu }^\omega ,M]=\frac{1}{2}\left[\phi |\mathrm{}^{}|\phi +\overline{\chi }|(\mathrm{}^{}+M^2\omega \sqrt{g})|\chi +\eta |(\mathrm{}^{}+2M^2\omega \sqrt{g})|\eta \right]$$

$$S^{reg}[\phi ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,\eta ,g_{\mu \nu },M].$$
(15)
We may, however, compensate the non invariance of $`S^{reg}`$ by a transformation of the regulator fields:

$`|\phi ^w>`$ $`=`$ $`|\phi >`$ (16)
$`|\eta ^w>`$ $`=`$ $`(\mathrm{}^{}+2M^2w\sqrt{g})^{1/2}(\mathrm{}^{}+2M^2\sqrt{g})^{1/2}|\eta >`$ (17)
$`|\chi ^w>`$ $`=`$ $`(\mathrm{}^{}+M^2w\sqrt{g})^{1/2}(\mathrm{}^{}+M^2\sqrt{g})^{1/2}|\chi >`$ (18)
after which we see that

$$S_{reg}[\phi ^w,\eta ^w,\overline{\chi }^w,\chi ^w,g^w,M]=S_{reg}[\phi ,\eta ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,g,M].$$
(19)
Eqs. (18 -19) define the non local symmetry of the regularized action. This symmetry must be studied of course at the quantum level, by considering the regularized vacuum functional

$$Z_{reg}[g_{\mu \nu }]=[𝒟\phi 𝒟\eta 𝒟\overline{\chi }𝒟\chi ]_g\mathrm{exp}(iS_{reg}[\phi ,\eta ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,g,M]).$$
(20)
Performing the Weyl transformation (3) for $`g_{\mu \nu }`$ in (20) followed by the change of variables (18) in the functional integral, we see that:

$`Z_{reg}[g_{\mu \nu }^w]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle [𝒟\phi ^w𝒟\eta ^w𝒟\overline{\chi }^w𝒟\chi ^w]_{g^w}\mathrm{exp}(iS_{reg}[\phi ,\eta ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,g,M])}`$ (21)
$`=`$ $`J_{reg}[g,w,M]{\displaystyle [𝒟\phi 𝒟\eta 𝒟\overline{\chi }𝒟\chi ]_g\mathrm{exp}(iS_{reg}[\phi ,\eta ,\overline{\chi },\chi ,g,M])}`$ (22)
where $`J_{reg}`$ denotes the Jacobian for the transformation (18):

$$J_{reg}[g,w,M]=det[(\mathrm{}^{}+M^2\sqrt{g})^1(\mathrm{}^{}+M^2w\sqrt{g})]$$

$$\times det[(\mathrm{}^{}+2M^2\sqrt{g})^1(\mathrm{}^{}+2M^2w\sqrt{g})]^{1/2},$$
(23)
and the suffix ‘reg’ is used because, as we will see now, this Jacobian is finite. It is worth noting that, although the integration measure for each field $`[𝒟\varphi _i]`$ depends non trivially on the background metric, as in the unregularized case, the product of the integration measures for the four fields does not depend on $`w`$, due to the cancellation between the anomalous factors corresponding to bosonic and Grassmann fields. These Jacobian factors are independent of the masses of the fields.

If we define the finite quantities $`Z`$ and $`J`$ as the limit of $`Z_{reg}`$ and $`J_{reg}`$ for $`M\mathrm{}`$ equation (22) implies that $`Z[g^w]=J[g,w]Z[g]`$. Thus we have to evaluate Eq.(23) in the limit $`M\mathrm{}`$.

Let us now calculate the regulated Jacobian (23). As the metric is assumed to be conformally flat, and $`\mathrm{}^{}`$ is invariant under (3), it is obvious that we may replace $`\mathrm{}^{}`$ by $`\mathrm{}`$, and that $`\sqrt{g}=1`$. We then rewrite $`J_{reg}`$ in the form:

$$J_{reg}[\eta ,w,M]=J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,M]\times J_{reg}^{(2)}[w,M]$$
(24)
where

$`J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,M]`$ $`=`$ $`det\left[(\mathrm{}+M^2)^1(\mathrm{}+M^2w)\right]`$ (25)
$`J_{reg}^{(2)}[w,M]`$ $`=`$ $`\left[J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,\sqrt{2}M]\right]^{1/2}.`$ (26)
We shall now, for calculational purposes, consider $`J_{reg}^{(1)}`$ alone, since the factor $`J_{reg}^{(2)}`$ can be obtained from it by some simple substitutions. However, the two factors have to be taken together for the cancellation between UV divergences to happen.

To evaluate $`J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,M]`$, we take into account the fact that we will, in the end, be interested in the $`M\mathrm{}`$ limit. This justifies the use of some form of expansion in powers of $`\frac{1}{M}`$. A small dimensionless parameter has then to be built using $`M`$, and the only other dimensionful object: derivatives of $`\omega `$ ($`\omega `$ itself is dimensionless). We then follow the derivative expansion technique  to split the field $`\omega `$ into a slowly varying part $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$ plus a fluctuating piece $`\alpha `$

$$\omega (x)=\stackrel{~}{\omega }(x)+\alpha (x),$$
(27)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }(x)`$ is to be regarded as a constant when acted by the derivative operator. We then rotate to Euclidean spacetime, and expand $`\mathrm{ln}J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,M]`$ in powers of $`\alpha `$, starting from

$$\mathrm{ln}J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,M]=\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}(\frac{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}{^2+M^2})+\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}\left(1+\frac{M^2\alpha }{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\right),$$
(28)
where $`^2=\delta _{\mu \nu }_\mu _\nu `$ is the flat, Euclidean spacetime Laplace operator. Taking into account that the linear term vanishes, and terms with more than two $`\alpha `$’s are suppressed by negative powers of $`M`$, it is sufficient to use the expansion:

$$\mathrm{ln}J_{reg}^{(1)}[w,M]=\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}(\frac{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}{^2+M^2})$$

$$\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Tr}\left(\frac{M^2\alpha }{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\frac{M^2\alpha }{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\right)+𝒪(\frac{1}{M^2}).$$
(29)
The first, zero derivative term, is divergent (even for finite $`M`$). However, remembering that we are using a Pauli-Villars scheme, we have to evaluate the momentum integral that results from combining it with the corresponding contribution from $`\mathrm{ln}J^{(2)}`$. This produces a finite answer:

$$\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}(\frac{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}{^2+M^2})\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}(\frac{^2+2M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}{^2+2M^2})=\frac{M^2\mathrm{ln}2}{4\pi }(\stackrel{~}{\omega }1),$$
(30)
proportional to $`M^2`$. This is finite (for finite $`M`$), and this shows that the Jacobian for the non local symmetry transformations is indeed finite. Of course, when $`M`$ tends to infinite, this contribution diverges. The term proportional to $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$ requires the introduction of a counterterm of the cosmological constant type. The $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$-independent divergence in Eq. 30 can be absorbed into the normalization factor of $`𝒵`$.

For the second order term (which is finite when $`M\mathrm{}`$), a standard calculation yields, for $`M\mathrm{}`$

$$\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Tr}[\frac{M^2}{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\alpha \frac{M^2}{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\alpha ]=\frac{1}{48\pi }d^2x\frac{1}{\stackrel{~}{w}^2}_\mu \alpha ^\mu \alpha .$$
(31)
The derivative expansion technique implies , on the other hand, that $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$ may be replaced by $`\omega `$ in a second order term, and that derivatives of $`\alpha `$ are tantamount to derivatives of $`\omega `$. Then,

$$\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Tr}[\frac{M^2}{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\alpha \frac{M^2}{^2+M^2\stackrel{~}{\omega }}\alpha ]=\frac{1}{48\pi }d^2x\frac{1}{\omega ^2}_\mu \omega ^\mu \omega .$$
(32)
This contribution has to be combined with the second order term coming from $`J_{reg}^{(2)}`$, which only differs in a $`\frac{1}{2}`$ global factor. Then,

$$\underset{M\mathrm{}}{lim}J_{reg}[\eta ,w,M]=\frac{1}{96\pi }d^2x\frac{1}{\omega ^2}_\mu \omega ^\mu \omega .$$
(33)
which is the (Euclidean) Liouville action. Rotating back to Minkowski spacetime we obtain the result given in Eq. (9).

## III The chiral anomaly

This example shares many properties with the previous one of the conformal anomaly, and helps to understand the general nature of the procedure we have applied in section II.

We shall consider here $`𝒵[A]`$, the vacuum functional for a massless fermion in $`1+1`$ dimensions,

$$𝒵[A]=[𝒟\overline{\psi }𝒟\psi ]_Ae^{iS_F[\overline{\psi },\psi ;A]}$$
(34)
with

$$S_F[\overline{\psi },\psi ;A]=d^2x\overline{\psi }(i\overline{)}e\overline{)}A)\psi .$$
(35)
Again, the integration measure depends on the background field configuration. The background gauge field $`A`$ may be decomposed as follows:

$$eA_\mu =_\mu \phi +ϵ_{\mu \nu }_\nu \rho ,$$
(36)
where $`\phi `$ and $`\rho `$ are scalar and pseudoscalar fields, respectively. Then one easily sees that the fermionic action may be rewritten as

$$S_F[\overline{\psi },\psi ;A]=d^2x\overline{\psi }(i\overline{)}\overline{)}(\phi +\gamma _5\rho )\psi ,$$
(37)
what means that the gauge field may actually be erased by a gauge plus chiral transformation of the fermions. This, as for the previous example, implies that the classical dynamics of the system is trivial. However, the anomaly under chiral fermionic transformations introduces a non trivial quantum dynamics.

In the usual derivation, one performs chiral transformations of the fermions,

$$\psi (x)=e^{i\alpha (x)\gamma _5}\psi (x),\overline{\psi }(x)=\overline{\psi }(x)e^{i\alpha (x)\gamma _5},$$
(38)
and the chiral anomaly appears from the non-invariance of the fermionic measure.

To consider an alternative derivation, we note that the Pauli-Villars regularized action in this case requires the addition of just one (massive) bosonic spinor field $`\varphi `$, such that

$$S_F^{reg}[\overline{\psi },\psi ,\overline{\varphi },\varphi ;A]=d^2x\left[\overline{\psi }(i\overline{)}e\overline{)}A)\psi +\overline{\varphi }(i\overline{)}e\overline{)}AM)\varphi \right].$$
(39)
When $`\alpha `$ is a constant, the non-local infinitesimal chiral symmetry transformations of (39) are,

$`\delta \psi `$ $`=`$ $`i\alpha \gamma _5\psi `$ (40)
$`\delta \overline{\psi }`$ $`=`$ $`i\alpha \overline{\psi }\gamma _5`$ (41)
$`\delta \varphi `$ $`=`$ $`i\alpha \gamma _5{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{)}D}{\overline{)}DiM}}\varphi `$ (42)
$`\delta \overline{\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`i\alpha \overline{\varphi }{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{)}D}{\overline{)}DiM}}\gamma _5,`$ (43)
where

$$\overline{)}D=\overline{)}+ie\overline{)}A.$$
(44)
The action is invariant under these transformations, while the Jacobian becomes

$$J=det\left[1+i\alpha \gamma _5(1\frac{\overline{)}D}{\overline{)}DiM})\right]^2$$
(45)
which may be rewritten as

$$J=\mathrm{exp}\left[2i\alpha \mathrm{Tr}\gamma _5(\frac{1}{1+\frac{\overline{)}D^2}{M^2}})\right].$$
(46)
The funtional trace is finite, and reproduces the proper result when $`M\mathrm{}`$:

$$J=\mathrm{exp}[i\frac{e}{2\pi }\alpha d^2xϵ^{\mu \nu }_\mu A_\nu ].$$
(47)
When $`\alpha `$ is spacetime dependent, the regularized action is no longer invariant. However, we may use that kind of transformation to get rid of the dependence in $`A_\mu `$. Those transformations are defined by

$$\delta \psi =i\alpha (x)\gamma _5\psi ,\delta \overline{\psi }=i\overline{\psi }\gamma _5\alpha (x)$$

$$\delta \varphi =i\gamma _5\frac{\overline{)}D}{\overline{)}DiM}\alpha (x)\varphi ,\delta \overline{\varphi }=i\overline{\varphi }\alpha (x)\frac{\overline{)}D}{\overline{)}DiM}\gamma _5,$$
(48)
and the corresponding variation of the action is

$$\delta S_F^{reg}=d^2x[\overline{\psi }\overline{)}(\gamma _5\alpha )\psi +\overline{\varphi }\overline{)}(\gamma _5\alpha )\varphi ].$$
(49)
The Jacobian is easily shown to be

$$J=\mathrm{exp}[i\frac{e}{2\pi }d^2x\alpha (x)ϵ^{\mu \nu }_\mu A_\nu ].$$
(50)
## IV Conclusions

We have presented two concrete examples of systems where the regularized action has a non local symmetry which is the natural extension of the standard symmetry of the unregularized action. Moreover, the application of those transformations in the functional integral framework yields regularized Jacobians which properly reproduce the anomalies when the cutoff tends to infinity. This makes the connection between the regularization of the diagrams of a model, and the regularization of its Jacobian more transparent than in the usual setting.

We remark that our method differs also from performing the usual (local) transformations to the regularized action. This procedure would give no Jacobian, due to the cancellation between bare fields and regulators, while the regularized action would be non-invariant. The anomaly would appear in this case from the non-invariance of the regularized action.

Finally, we want to remark that the phenomenon we have described, namely, the existence of a remnant of the classical symmetry for the regularized action is not new. It has been recently emphasized  that massless fermions on the lattice, even thought the regulatization breaks the naive chiral symmetry, may have a lattice equivalence of that symmetry, if the lattice Dirac operator satisfies the Ginsparg-Wilson relation . Indeed, this relation can be used to derive the chiral anomaly and the related index theorems on the lattice .

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET (Argentina), Fundacion Antorchas, ANPCyT, CNEA and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. The authors would like to thank the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics for hospitality during completion of this work.