THE TRACE ANOMALY AND THE GRAVITATIONAL COUPLING OF AN ANOMALOUS U(1)

We extend a previous computation of the TJJ correlator, involving the energy-momentum tensor of an Abelian gauge theory and two vector currents (J equivalent to J(V)),to the case of mixed axial-vector/vector currents (J(A)). The study is performed in analogy to the case of the AVV vertex for the chiral anomaly. We derive the general structure of the anomalous Ward identities and provide explicit tests of their consistency using Dimensional Reduction. Mixed massive correlators of the form TJ(V)J(A) are shown to vanish both by Ward identities and by C-invariance. The result is characterized by the appearance of massless scalar degrees of freedom in the coupling of chiral and vector theoriestogravity,affecting both the soft and the ultraviolet region of the vertex. This is in agreement with previous studies of the effective action of gauge and conformal anomalies in QED and QCD.