Duality-Symmetry Enhancement in Maxwell Theory
High Energy Physics - Theory
2025-10-09 v2
Abstract
Free Maxwell theory on general four-manifolds may, under certain conditions on the background geometry, exhibit holomorphic factorization in its partition function. We show that when this occurs, new discrete symmetries emerge at orbifold points of the conformal manifold. These symmetries, which act only on a sublattice of flux configurations, are not associated with standard dualities, yet they may carry 't Hooft anomalies, potentially causing the partition function to vanish even in the absence of apparent pathologies. We further explore their non-invertible extensions and argue that their anomalies can account for zeros of the partition function at smooth points in the moduli space.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.20141,
title = {Duality-Symmetry Enhancement in Maxwell Theory},
author = {Shani Meynet and Daniele Migliorati and Raffaele Savelli and Michele Tortora},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.20141},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
v2: 26 pages, published version