Chiral anomalies in six dimensions from harmonic superspace

Abstract

We develop a superfield approach to compute chiral anomalies in general ${\cal N}=(1,0)$ supersymmetric gauge theories in six dimensions. Within the harmonic-superspace formulation for these gauge theories, the anomalous contributions to the effective action only come from matter and ghost hypermultiplets. By studying the short-distance behaviour of the propagator for the hypermultiplet coupled to a background vector multiplet, we compute the covariant and consistent chiral anomalies. We also provide a superform formulation for the non-abelian anomalous current multiplet in general ${\cal N}=(1,0)$ supersymmetric gauge theories.