Worldline Path Integrals for Fermions with General Couplings

Abstract

We derive a worldline path integral representation for the effective action of a multiplet of Dirac fermions coupled to the most general set of matrix-valued scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial vector and antisymmetric tensor background fields. By representing internal degrees of freedom in terms of worldline fermions as well, we obtain a formulation which manifestly exhibits chiral gauge invariance.

Comments: 17 pages, Plain Tex, no macros needed; corrections to references and to a formula