Trace Anomalies and Cocycles of Weyl and Diffeomorphisms Groups

Abstract

The general structure of trace anomaly, suggested recently by Deser and Shwimmer, is argued to be the consequence of the Wess-Zumino consistency condition. The response of partition function on a finite Weyl transformation, which is connected with the cocycles of the Weyl group in $d=2k$ dimensions is considered, and explicit answers for $d=4,6$ are obtained. Particularly, it is shown, that addition of the special combination of the local counterterms leads to the simple form of that cocycle, quadratic over Weyl field $\sigma$, i.e. the form, similar to the two-dimensional Lioville action. This form also establishes the connection of the cocycles with conformal-invariant operators of order $d$ and zero weight. Beside that, the general rule for transformation of that cocycles into the cocycles of diffeomorphisms group is presented.