Anomalies, Local Counter Terms and Bosonization

Abstract

We re-examine the issue of local counter terms in the analysis of quantum anomalies. We analyze two-dimensional theories and show that the notion of local counter terms need to be carefully defined depending on the physics contents such as whether one is analyzing gauge theory or bosonization. It is shown that a part of the Jacobian, which is apparently spurious and eliminated by a local counter term corresponding to the mass term of the gauge field in gauge theory, cannot be removed by a {\it local} counter term and plays a central role by giving the kinetic term of the bosonized field in the context of path integral bosonization.