Soliton Fermionic number from the heat kernel expansion

Abstract: We consider different methods of calculating the (fractional) fermion number of solitons based on the heat kernel expansion. We derive a formula for the localized eta function a more systematic version of the derivative expansion for spectral assymmetry and that provides a more systematic version of the derivative expansion for spectral asymmetry and compute the fermion number in a multiflavour extension of the Goldstone-Wilczek model.We also propose an improved expansionof the heat kernelthat allows the tackling ofthe convergence issues and permits an automated computation of the coefficients