On Anomalies in Orbifold Theories

Abstract

We study the issue of gauge invariance in five-dimensional theories compactified on an orbifold $S^1/(\mathbb{Z}_2\times \mathbb{Z}^\prime_2)$ in the presence of an external U(1) gauge field. From the four-dimensional point We study the issue of gauge invariance in five-dimensional theories compactified on an orbifold $S^1/(\mathbb{Z}_2\times \mathbb{Z}^\prime_2)$ in the presence of an external U(1) gauge field. From the four-dimensional point of view the theory contains a tower of Kaluza-Klein Dirac fermions with chiral couplings and it looks anomalous at the quantum level. We show that this ``anomaly'' is cancelled by a topological Chern-Simons term which is generated in the effective action when the gauge theory is regularized introducing an Pauli-Villars fermion with an odd mass term. In the presence of a classical background gauge field, the fermionic current acquires a vacuum expectation value, thus generating the suitable Chern-Simons term and a gauge invariant theory.