't Hooft anomalies and boundaries

Abstract

We argue that there is an obstruction to placing theories with 't Hooft anomalies on manifolds with a boundary, unless the symmetry associated with the anomaly can be represented as a non-invariance under an Abelian transformation. For a two dimensional conformal field theory we further demonstrate that all anomalies except the usual trace anomaly are incompatible on a manifold with a boundary. Our findings extend a known result whereby, under mild assumptions, Lagrangian theories with chiral matter cannot be canonically quantized.

23 pages; v2: refs added

References in corpus (5)

• Boundary Conformal Field Theory and a Boundary Central Charge
• Physics at the entangling surface
• Holographic entanglement entropy and gravitational anomalies
• E-String Theory on Riemann Surfaces
• Displacement Operators and Constraints on Boundary Central Charges

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