Chiral anomalies in six dimensions from harmonic superspace

Abstract

Abstract We develop a superfield approach to compute chiral anomalies in general $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (1,0) supersymmetric gauge theories in six dimensions. Within the harmonic-superspace formulation for these gauge theories, the anomalous contributions to the effective action only come from matter and ghost hypermultiplets. By studying the short-distance behaviour of the propagator for the hypermultiplet coupled to a background vector multiplet, we compute the covariant and consistent chiral anomalies. We also provide a superform formulation for the non-abelian anomalous current multiplet in general $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (1, 0) supersymmetric gauge theories.