We show that the Loss-Yau zero modes of the 3d abelian Dirac operator may be interpreted in a simple manner in terms of a stereographic projection from a 4d Dirac operator with a constant field strength of definite helicity. This is an alternative to
the conventional viewpoint involving Hopf maps from S^3 to S^2. Furthermore, our construction generalizes in a straightforward way to any odd dimension. The number of zero modes is related to the Chern-Simons number in a nonlinear manner.
Our previously-developed calculational method (the partial wave cutoff method) is employed to evaluate explicitly scalar one-loop effective actions in a class of radially symmetric background gauge fields. Our method proves to be particularly effecti
ve when it is used in conjunction with a systematic WKB series for the large partial wave contribution to the effective action. By comparing these numerically exact calculations against the predictions based on the large mass expansion and derivative expansion, we discuss the validity ranges of the latter approximation methods.
