The Index and Axial Anomaly of a lattice Dirac operator

Abstract

A remarkable feature of a lattice Dirac operator is discussed. Unlike the Dirac operator for massless fermions in the continuum, this Ginsparg-Wilson lattice Dirac operator does not possess topological zero modes for any topologically-nontrivial background gauge fields, even though it is exponentially-local, doublers-free, and reproduces correct axial anomaly for topologically-trivial gauge configurations.

Comments: 3 pages, LaTex, Lattice2001(chiral)