A path integral for the chiral-form partition function

Abstract

Abstract Starting from the recent action proposed by Sen [1, 2], we evaluate the partition function of the compact chiral boson on a two-dimensional torus using a path-integral formulation. Crucially, we use a Wick-rotation procedure obtained from a complex deformation of the physical spacetime metric. This directly reproduces the expected result including general characteristics for the theta functions. We also present results for the chiral 2-form potential in six dimensions which can be readily extended to 4k+2 dimensions.