Nambu-Goldstone fields, anomalies and WZ terms

Abstract We construct the Wess-Zumino terms of anomalous gauge theories in cases the anomalous transformations do not form a subgroup or in situations where the separation between anomalous and non-anomalous transformations cannot be done in a local way. The extra variables corresponding to all gauge degrees of freedom are introduced so that the WZ term possesses additional gauge symmetries. It effectively kills the degrees of freedom of non-anomalous transformations, leaving those of anomalous transformations as propagating fields. Our formalism can be seen as a generalization of the non-linear realization method of Lie groups and applicable also to effective gauge field theories of Nambu-Goldstone fields associated with spontaneously broken global symmetries. As an example we discuss the BRST invariant formulation of 21) gravity in the Weyl invariant regularization and reproduce the local form of the WZ term.