Role of ambiguities and gauge invariance in the calculation of the radiatively induced Chern-Simons shift in extended QED

We investigate the possibility of Lorentz and CPT violations in the photon sector, of the ChemSimons form, be induced by radiative corrections arising from the Lorentz and CPT non-invariant fermionic sector of an extended version of QED. By analyzing the modified vacuum polarization tensor, three contributions are considered: two of them can be identified with well known amplitudes; the (identical) QED vacuum polarization tensor and the (closely related) AVV triangle amplitude. These amplitudes are evaluated in their most general form (to include in our discussion automatically the question of ambiguities) on the point of view of a strategy to manipulate and calculate divergent amplitudes that can avoid the explicit calculation of divergent integrals. Rather than this only general properties are used in intermediary steps. With this treatment, the results obtained by others authors can be easily recovered and we show that, if we choose to impose U (1) gauge invariance maintenance in the pure QED calculated amplitudes, to be consistent with the renormalizability, the induced Chem-Simons term assumes a non-vanishing value. However if, in addition, we choose to get an answer consistent with renormalizability by anomaly cancellation of the Standard Model a vanishing value can be obtained, in accordance with what was previously conjectured by other authors. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All fights reserved.