Locality and universality in gravitational anomaly cancellation

Abstract

We obtain necesary and sufficient conditions for gravitational anomaly cancellation. We show that perturbative gravitational anomalies can never be cancelled. In a similar way, in dimensions $n\neq3\operatorname{mod}4$ it is impossible to cancell global anomalies. However, in dimensions $n=3\operatorname{mod}4$ global anomalies can be cancelled. We prove that the unique way to cancel the anomaly is by using a Chern-Simons counterterm. Furthermore, the relationship between the problems of locality and universality is analyzed for gravitational anomalies.