We derive the relativistic chiral transport equation for massless fermions and antifermions by performing a semiclassical Foldy-Wouthuysen diagonalization of the quantum Dirac Hamiltonian. The Berry connection naturally emerges in the diagonalization process to modify the classical equations of motion of a fermion in an electromagnetic field. We also see that the fermion and antifermion dispersion relations are corrected at first order in the Planck constant by the Berry curvature, as previously derived by Son and Yamamoto for the particular case of vanishing temperature. Our approach does not require knowledge of the state of the system, and thus it can also be applied at high temperature. We provide support for our result by an alternative computation using an effective field theory for fermions and antifermions: the on-shell effective field theory. In this formalism, the off-shell fermionic modes are integrated out to generate an effective Lagrangian for the quasi-on-shell fermions/antifermions. The dispersion relation at leading order exactly matches the result from the semiclassical diagonalization. From the transport equation, we explicitly show how the axial and gauge anomalies are not modified at finite temperature and density despite the incorporation of the new dispersion relation into the distribution function.

• Received 1 May 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.076007