The absence of global anomalies of CP symmetry

Abstract

Some solutions to the strong CP problem assume that CP symmetry is a gauge symmetry, which is then spontaneously broken. For this scenario to be possible, the CP symmetry should not have any nonperturbative (global) anomalies. In this paper, we study anomalies of CP symmetry of fermions which are coupled to gravity and gauge fields with a gauge group $G$. When $G$ is connected and simply connected, we show that gauging a CP symmetry does not produce any new anomaly beyond the one before gauging it. In particular, the standard model matter content does not have anomalies.

Comments: 30 pages, 3 figures, v2: reference added