Effective action in a general chiral model: Next to leading order derivative expansion in the worldline method

We present a formalism to determine the imaginary part of a general chiral model in the derivative expansion. Our formalism is based on the worldline path integral for the covariant current that can be given in an explicit chiral and gauge covariant form. The effective action is then obtained by integrating the covariant current, taking account of the anomaly. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.