Manifestations of the vector anomaly in covariant and light-front calculations of the anomalous magnetic moment of W-+/- bosons

In the calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of W^± bosons, we discuss vector anomalies occurring in the fermion loop that spoil the predictive power of the theory. While the previous analyses were limited to using essentially the manifestly covariant dimensional regulation method, we extend the analysis using both the manifestly covariant formulation and the light-front Hamiltonian formulation with several different regularization methods. We find that the zero-mode contribution to the helicity zero-to-zero amplitude for the W^± gauge bosons is crucial for the correct light-front (LF) calculations. Further, we confirm that the anomaly-free condition found in the analysis of the axial anomaly can also get rid of the vector anomaly in light-front dynamics (LFD) as well as in the manifestly covariant calculations. Our findings in this work may provide a bottom-up fitness test not only to the LF calculations but also to the theory itself, whether it is any extension of the Standard Model or an effective field theoretic model for composite systems. © 2005 The American Physical Society.