A rederivation of the conformal anomaly for spin-1/2

Abstract

We rederive the conformal anomaly for spin-12 fermions by a genuine Feynman graph calculation, which has not been available so far. Although our calculation merely confirms a result that has been known for a long time, the erivation is new, and thus furnishes a method to investigate more complicated cases (in particular concerning the significance of the quantum trace of the stress tensor in non-conformal theories) where there remain several outstanding and unresolved issues.