Anomalous Transport Due to the Conformal Anomaly

Abstract

We show that the scale (conformal) anomaly in field theories leads to new anomalous transport effects that emerge in an external electromagnetic field in an inhomogeneous gravitational background. In inflating geometry the QED scale anomaly locally generates an electric current that flows in opposite direction with respect to background electric field (the scale electric effect). In a static spatially inhomogeneous gravitational background the dissipationless electric current flows transversely both to the magnetic field axis and to the gradient of the inhomogeneity (the scale magnetic effect). The anomalous currents are proportional to the beta function of the theory.