Electric-Magnetic Duality Rotations and Invariance of Actions

Abstract

For D=4 theories of a single U(1) gauge field strength coupled to gravity and matters, we show that the electric-magnetic duality can be formulated as an invariance of the actions. The symmetry is associated with duality rotation acting directly on the gauge field. The rotation is constructed in flat space, and an extension to curved spaces is also given. It is non-local and non-covariant, yet generates off-shell extended transformation of the field strength. The algebraic condition of Gaillard and Zumino turns out to be a necessary and sufficient condition for the invariance of actions. It may be used as a guiding principle in constructing self-dual actions in string and field theories.

Latex, 15 pages

References in corpus (4)

• SL(2,Z) duality of Born-Infeld theory from self-dual electrodynamics in 6 dimensions
• On Duality in the Born-Infeld Theory
• Hamiltonian Electric/Magnetic Duality and Lorentz Invariance
• Self-duality in Super D3-brane Action

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Supersymmetric Duality Rotations
• Electric-Magnetic Duality Invariant Lagrangians
• Self-duality in Super D3-brane Action
• Self-Duality of a Topologically Massive Born-Infeld Theory
• Duality family of scalar field
• Duality of Super D-brane Actions in General Type IIB Supergravity Background
• Off-Shell Duality in Born-Infeld Theory
• Self-Duality of Super D3-brane Action on $Ad{S}_5\times S^5$ Background
• The inverse spatial Laplacian of spherically symmetric spacetimes
• Off-Shell Duality in Maxwell and Born-Infeld Theories