Comment on Chiral and Conformal Anomalies

Abstract

It is shown that the trace anomaly is also identified with the Jacobian factor for the functional measure under the conformal transformation in the path-integral formalism. The path-integral formulation of anomalous Ward-Takahashi identities is then translated into a simple algebraic characterization of chiral and conformal anomalies. This exemplifies some of the common features shared by the topological and nontopological anomalies.