Title: Chiral and Gravitational Anomalies on Fermi surfaces
Speaker: Ismail Zahed
Date: Monday, February 10, 2014
Time: 4:00pm-5:30pm
Place: Seminar Room 313, Simons Center
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Abstract: A Fermi surface threaded by a Berry phase can be described by the Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term. After gauging, it produces a five-dimensional Chern-Simons term in the action. I show how this Chern-Simons term captures the essence of the Abelian, non-Abelian, and mixed gravitational anomalies in describing both in- and off-equilibrium phenomena. In particular I derive a novel contribution to the Chiral Vortical Effect that arises when a temperature gradient is present. I also discuss the issue of universality of the anomalous currents.
This work appeared in print in PRL 111, 161601 in collaboration with G. Basar and D. Kharzeev.
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i16/e161601