A conformal anomaly, scale anomaly, trace anomaly or Weyl anomaly is an

anomaly Anomaly may refer to: Science Natural *Anomaly (natural sciences) ** Atmospheric anomaly ** Geophysical anomaly Medical * Congenital anomaly (birth defect), a disorder present at birth ** Physical anomaly, a deformation of an anatomical struct ...

, i.e. a quantum phenomenon that breaks the conformal symmetry of the classical theory. A classically conformal theory is a theory which, when placed on a surface with arbitrary background metric, has an action that is invariant under rescalings of the background metric (

Weyl transformation :''See also Wigner–Weyl transform, for another definition of the Weyl transform.'' In theoretical physics, the Weyl transformation, named after Hermann Weyl, is a local rescaling of the metric tensor: :g_\rightarrow e^g_ which produces another ...

s), combined with corresponding transformations of the other fields in the theory. A conformal quantum theory is one whose partition function is unchanged by rescaling the metric. The variation of the action with respect to the background metric is proportional to the stress tensor, and therefore the variation with respect to a conformal rescaling is proportional to the trace of the stress tensor. As a result, the trace of the stress tensor must vanish for a conformally invariant theory. In the presence of a conformal anomaly the trace of the stress tensor can nevertheless acquire a non-vanishing expectation. For this reason, a conformal anomaly is sometimes also called a trace anomaly.

String theory

In string theory, conformal symmetry on the worldsheet is a local Weyl symmetry and the anomaly must therefore cancel if the theory is to be consistent. The required cancellation implies that the

spacetime In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why diffe ...

dimensionality must be equal to the critical dimension which is either 26 in the case of

bosonic string theory Bosonic string theory is the original version of string theory, developed in the late 1960s and named after Satyendra Nath Bose. It is so called because it contains only bosons in the spectrum. In the 1980s, supersymmetry was discovered in the c ...

or 10 in the case of

superstring theory Superstring theory is an attempt to explain all of the particles and fundamental forces of nature in one theory by modeling them as vibrations of tiny supersymmetric strings. 'Superstring theory' is a shorthand for supersymmetric string th ...

. This case is called ''critical string theory''. There are alternative approaches known as '' non-critical string theory'' in which the space-time dimensions can be less than 26 for the bosonic theory or less than 10 for the superstring ''i.e.'' the four-dimensional case is plausible within this context. However, some intuitive postulates like flat space being a valid background, need to be given up.

QCD

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a ty ...

in the chiral limit, the classical theory has no

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different element ...

scale so there is a conformal symmetry. As a consequence, for example, the proton is massless because the quark's kinetic energy and potential energy cancel by the relativistic

virial theorem In mechanics, the virial theorem provides a general equation that relates the average over time of the total kinetic energy of a stable system of discrete particles, bound by potential forces, with that of the total potential energy of the system. ...

. However, in the quantum case the symmetry is broken by a conformal anomaly. This introduces a scale, which is the scale at which colour confinement occurs. This determines the sizes and masses of

hadron In particle physics, a hadron (; grc, ἁδρός, hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the ele ...

s, except for pseudoscalar mesons. Hence this effect is responsible for most of the mass of ordinary

matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic par ...

. (In fact the

quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All common ...

s have non-zero masses, so the more realistic classical theory does have a mass scale. However, the masses are small so it is still nearly conformal. The mass due to the conformal anomaly is much greater than quark masses, so it has a much greater effect on the masses of hadrons.)

References

* Polchinski, Joseph (1998). ''String Theory'', Cambridge University Press. A modern textbook. ** Vol. 1: An introduction to the bosonic string. . ** Vol. 2: Superstring theory and beyond. . * * * * * * {{String theory topics , state=collapsed Anomalies (physics) Conformal field theory Quantum chromodynamics Renormalization group String theory