Gravitational higher-form symmetries and the origin of hidden symmetries in Kaluza-Klein compactifications

Abstract

We show that, in presence of isometries and non-trivial topology, the Einstein--Hilbert action is invariant under certain transformations of the metric which are not diffeomorphisms. These transformations are similar to the higher-form symmetries of field theories with $p$-form fields. In the context of toroidal Kaluza--Klein compactifications, we show that these symmetries give rise to some of the ``hidden symmetries'' (dualities) of the dimensionally-reduced theories.

LaTeX 2e file, 20 pages, no figures

References in corpus (4)

• Generalized Global Symmetries
• Symmetries and Strings in Field Theory and Gravity
• An Introduction to Higher-Form Symmetries
• T duality and Wald entropy formula in the Heterotic Superstring effective action at first order in ${\alpha }^{\prime }$

Cited by in corpus (1)

• On the generalized Komar charge of Kaluza-Klein theories and higher-form symmetries