Fermionic representation of the Wess-Zumino term and the chiral Schwinger model

The quantum structure of the chiral Schwinger model is studied by fermionization of the Wess-Zumino field. The model contains a hidden parameter a reflecting the ambiguity in the definition of the gauge anomaly. It is shown that, for the special value a=2, this chiral model is equivalent to massless QED2 in the sense that they share the same gauge field and the same (left-handed) chiral fermion. The fermionic representation of the Wess-Zumino term provides a natural way to summarize the current algebras and yields a regularization-independent current-algebraic characterization of the model. (orig.)