NAMBU-GOLDSTONE FIELDS, ANOMALIES AND WZ TERMS

We construct the Wess-Zumino terms of anomalous gauge theories in case s the anomalous transformations do not form a subgroup or in situation s where the separation between anomalous and non-anomalous transformat ions cannot be done in a local way. The extra variables corresponding to all gauge degrees of freedom are introduced so that the WZ term pos sesses additional gauge symmetries. It effectively kills the degrees o f 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 held theories of Nambu-Goldstone f ields associated with spontaneously broken global symmetries. As an ex ample we discuss the BRST invariant formulation of 2D gravity in the W eyl invariant regularization and reproduce the local form of the WZ te rm. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.