Anomalies in the effective theory of heavy quarks

Abstract

The question of the anomalies in the effective theory of heavy quarks is investigated at two different levels. Firstly, it is shown that none of the symmetries of this effective theory contains an anomaly. The existence of a new `$ \gamma _ 5 $'-symmetry is pointed out and shown to be also anomaly free. Secondly, it is shown that the chiral anomaly of QCD is not reproduced in the effective lagrangian for the heavy quarks, thus contradicting 't Hooft's anomaly matching condition. Finally, the effective theory of heavy quarks is derived from the QCD lagrangian in such a way that the terms leading to the anomaly are included. For this derivation the generating functional method is used.