Chiral asymmetry and axial anomaly in magnetized relativistic matter

Abstract

The induced axial current and the chiral anomaly are studied in the normal phase of magnetized relativistic matter. A special attention is paid to the role of the chiral shift parameter Delta, leading to a relative shift of the longitudinal momenta in the dispersion relations of opposite chirality fermions. In the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, it is shown directly from the form of the gap equation that Delta necessarily exists in the normal phase in a magnetic field. By making use of the gauge invariant point-splitting regularization, we then show that the presence of Delta essentially modifies the form of the axial current, but does not affect the conventional axial anomaly relation. By recalculating the axial current with the proper-time regularization, we conclude that the result is robust with respect to a specific regularization scheme used.