New knotted solutions of Maxwell's equations
Abstract
In this note we have further developed the study of topologically non-trivial solutions of vacuum electrodynamics. We have discovered a novel method of generating such solutions by applying conformal transformations with complex parameters on known solutions expressed in terms of Bateman's variables. This has enabled us to get a wide class of solutions from the basic configuration like constant electromagnetic fields and plane-waves. We have introduced a covariant formulation of the Bateman's construction and discussed the conserved charges associated with the conformal group as well as a set of four types of conserved helicities. We have also given a formulation in terms of quaternions. This led to a simple map between the electromagnetic knotted and linked solutions into flat connections of gauge theory. We have computed the corresponding CS charge in a class of solutions and it takes integer values.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1502.01382,
title = {New knotted solutions of Maxwell's equations},
author = {Carlos Hoyos and Nilanjan Sircar and Jacob Sonnenschein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.01382},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
version accepted for publication in J. Phys. A. minor changes: references added, new figure added, typos corrected