Mixed States from Anomalies

Abstract

There are several instances where quantum anomalies of continuous and discrete classical symmetries play an important role in fundamental physics. Examples come from chiral anomalies in the Standard Model of fundamental interactions and gravitational anomalies in string theories. Their generic origin is the fact that classical symmetries may not preserve the domains of quantum operators like the Hamiltonian. In this work, we show by simple examples that anomalous symmetries can often be implemented at the expense of working with mixed states having non-zero entropies. In particular there is the result on color breaking by non-abelian magnetic monopoles. This anomaly can be rectified by using impure states. We also argue that non-abelian groups of twisted bundles are always anomalous for pure states sharpening an earlier argument of Sorkin and Balachandran. This is the case of mapping class groups of geons indicating that "large" diffeos are anomalous for pure states in the presence of geons. Nevertheless diffeo invariance may be restored by using impure states. This work concludes with examples of these ideas drawn from molecular physics. The above approach using impure states is entirely equivalent to restricting all states to the algebra of observables invariant under the anomalous symmetries. For anomalous gauge groups such as color, this would mean that we work with observables singlet under global gauge transformations. For color, this will mean that we work with color singlets, a reasonable constraint.