Invariant background field method for chiral lagrangians including Wess-Zumino terms

A chiral invariant background field method is introduced in order to study the structure of higher order terms in chiral perturbation theory. Explicit one-loop calculations are presented together with the construction of the most general (p6) chiral lagrangian relevant for anomalous processes. The non-renormalization of the coefficient of the Wess-Zumino term in both two and four dimensions is discussed in general.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29170/1/0000216.pd