Universal electromagnetic fields

Abstract

We study universal electromagnetic (test) fields, i.e., p-forms fields F that solve simultaneously (virtually) any generalized electrodynamics (containing arbitrary powers and derivatives of F in the field equations) in n spacetime dimensions. One of the main results is a sufficient condition: any null F that solves Maxwell's equations in a Kundt spacetime of aligned Weyl and traceless-Ricci type III is universal (in particular thus providing examples of p-form Galileons on curved Kundt backgrounds). In addition, a few examples in Kundt spacetimes of Weyl type II are presented. Some necessary conditions are also obtained, which are particularly strong in the case n=4=2p: all the scalar invariants of a universal 2-form in four dimensions must be constant, and vanish in the special case of a null F .

20 pages

References in corpus (9)

• Spacetimes characterized by their scalar curvature invariants
• Kundt Spacetimes
• Algebraic classification of higher dimensional spacetimes based on null alignment
• Generalization of the Geroch-Held-Penrose formalism to higher dimensions
• Higher dimensional VSI spacetimes
• Gyratons on direct-product spacetimes
• Electromagnetic fields with vanishing scalar invariants
• Electromagnetic fields with vanishing quantum corrections
• Higher dimensional spacetimes with a geodesic, shearfree, twistfree and expanding null congruence

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Nonlinear electromagnetic fields in strictly stationary spacetimes
• Einstein-Maxwell fields as solutions of higher-order theories
• Almost universal spacetimes in higher-order gravity theories
• Static and radiating dyonic black holes coupled to conformally invariant electrodynamics in higher dimensions
• Kerr-Schild double copy for Kundt spacetimes of any dimension
• Generalizations and challenges for the spacetime block-diagonalization
• Einstein-Maxwell fields with vanishing higher-order corrections
• Locally Homogeneous Kundt Triples and CSI Metrics
• All non-expanding gravitational waves in $D$-dimensional (anti-)de Sitter space
• Einstein-Yang-Mills fields immune to quantum corrections
• Gauge fields with vanishing scalar invariants