# Quantum Anomalies in Non-Gauge Theories?

I'm reading about quantum anomalies in QFT and all the examples seem to arise in gauge theories. Is it true that theories without a local gauge invariance don't have quantum anomalies? I can't think of examples of symmetry violation in any non-gauge theories, particularly the free theories. Then again, there might be a well-known example I'm not aware of!

-
In fact, I would say that anomalies have relatively little to do with gauge theories, although they are commonly studied there. As Prof. Wen says they are about the impossibility to construct a UV complete quantum theory, because the low energy degrees of freedom cannot be quantized consistently. Therefore there must be other degrees of freedom above the cutoff. Example; there are restrictions on fermion hilbert spaces because of time reversal. The axial anonmaly keeps track of the violation of these restrictions. –  BebopButUnsteady Aug 21 at 18:26

There are things called sigma model anomalies, see papers listed in a sample inspire database query here.

Here, the anomaly is associated to the general coordinate invariance in the target space of the non-linear sigma model: the fields take values in a nontrivial manifold (and its associated vector bundles), rather than vector spaces. Classically, the action is independent of the coordinates used to describe the target manifold. But this independence can be lost via quantization.

-