The trace anomaly and the gravitational coupling of an anomalous U(1)

We extend a previous computation of the TJJ correlator, involving the energymomentum tensor of an Abelian gauge theory and two vector currents (J ≡ JV), to the case of mixed axial-vector/vector currents (JA). The study is performed in analogy to the case of the AVV vertex for the chiral anomaly. We derive the general structure of the anomalous Ward identities and provide explicit tests of their consistency using Dimensional Reduction. Mixed massive correlators of the form TJV JA are shown to vanish both by Ward identities and by C-invariance. The result is characterized by the appearance of massless scalar degrees of freedom in the coupling of chiral and vector theories to gravity, affecting both the soft and the ultraviolet region of the vertex. This is in agreement with previous studies of the effective action of gauge and conformal anomalies in QED and QCD. © 2011 World Scientific Publishing Company.