Axial Couplings on the World-Line

Abstract

We construct a world-line representation for the fermionic one-loop effective action with axial and also vector, scalar, and pseudo-scalar couplings. We use this expression to compute a few selected scattering amplitudes. These allow us to verify that our method yields the same results as standard field theory. In particular, we are able to reproduce the chiral anomaly. Our starting point is the second-order formulation for the Dirac fermion. We translate the second order expressions into a world-line action.

12 pages, LaTeX 2e with array and epsf packages, Postscript figures. Submitted to Phys. Lett. B. Minor corrections, fixed a number of typos