Facts of life with $\gamma_5$

Abstract.

The increasing precision of many experiments in elementary particle physics leads to continuing interest in perturbative higher order calculations in the electroweak Standard Model or extensions of it. Such calculations are of increasing complexity because more loops and/or more legs are considered. Correspondingly efficient computational methods are mandatory for many calculations. One problem which affects the feasibility of higher order calculations is the problem with $\gamma_5$ in dimensional regularization. Since the subject thirty years after its invention is still controversial I advocate here some ideas which seem not to be common knowledge but might shed some new light on the problem. I present arguments in favor of utilizing an anticommuting $\gamma_5$ and a simple 4–dimensional treatment of the hard anomalies.