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.
Recently the partial wave cutoff method was developed as a new calculational scheme for a functional determinant of quantum field theory in radial backgrounds. For the contribution given by an infinite sum of large partial waves, we derive explicitly
radial WKB series in the angular momentum cutoff for $d=2,3,4$ and 5 ($d$ is the spacetime dimension), which has uniform validity irrespectively of any specific values assumed for other parameters. Utilizing this series, precision evaluation of the renormalized functional determinant is possible with a relatively small number of low partial wave contributions determined separately. We illustrate the power of this scheme in numerically exact evaluation of the prefactor (expressed as a functional determinant) in the case of the false vacuum decay of 4D scalar field theory.
