ANOMALIES AND WESS-ZUMINO TERMS IN AN EXTENDED, REGULARIZED FIELD-ANTIFIELD FORMALISM

Quantization of anomalous gauge theories with a closed, irreducible ga uge algebra within the extended field-antifield formalism is further p ursued. Using a Pauli-Villars (PV) regularization of the generating fu nctional at one-loop level, an alternative form for the anomaly is fou nd which involves only the regulator. The analysis of this expression allows to conclude that recently found ghost-number-one cocycles with nontrivial antifield dependence cannot appear in PV regularization. Af terwards, the extended field-antifield formalism is further completed by incorporating quantum effects of the extra variables, i.e., by expl icitly taking into account the regularization of the extra sector. In this context, invariant PV regulators are constructed from non-invaria nt ones, leading to an alternative interpretation of the Wess-Zumino a ction as the local counterterm relating invariant and non-invariant re gularizations. Finally, application of the above ideas to the bosonic string reproduces the well-known Liouville action and the shift (26 - D) --> (25 - D) at one loop.