The axial anomaly in lattice QED. A universal point of view

We give a perturbative proof that U(1) lattice gauge theories generate the axial anomaly in the continuum limit under very general conditions on the lattice Dirac operator. These conditions are locality, gauge covariance and the absense of species doubling. They hold for Wilson fermions as well as for realizations of the Dirac operator that satisfy the Ginsparg-Wilson relation. The proof is based on the lattice power counting theorem.