Related papers: On p-form gauge theories and their conformal limit…
Gauge $p$-forms in diverse dimensions are ubiquitous in supergravity and string theory. This work reviews novel covariant formulations designed to generate arbitrary interacting duality-invariant or chiral (self-dual) $p$-form theories in…
In six dimensions there exists a unique one-parameter family of non-linear conformal electrodynamics for a chiral 2-form gauge field which includes (in a free-field limit) the linear chiral 2-form theory and is related, by dimensional…
All nonlinear extensions of the source-free Maxwell equations preserving both SO(2) electromagnetic duality invariance and conformal invariance are found, and shown to be limits of a one-parameter generalisation of Born-Infeld…
In our previous article Phys. Rev. Lett. 127 (2021) 271601, we announced a novel 'democratic' Lagrangian formulation of general nonlinear electrodynamics in four dimensions that features electric and magnetic potentials on equal footing.…
The strong-field limit for the 2-form potential on an M5-brane yields a conformal chiral 2-form electrodynamics in six dimensions, with gauge-invariant self-interactions but no adjustable coupling constant; the stress tensor is that of a…
We prove that a $4d$ theory of non-linear electrodynamics has equations of motion which are equivalent to those of the Maxwell theory in curved spacetime, but with the usual metric $g_{\mu \nu}$ replaced by a unit-determinant metric $h_{\mu…
We consider properties of non-linear theories of a chiral 4-form gauge field $A_4$ in ten space-time dimensions with an emphasis on a subclass of these theories which are invariant under the $D = 10$ conformal symmetry. We show that general…
We construct a non-Abelian gauge theory of chiral 2-forms (self-dual gauge fields) in 6 dimensions with a spatial direction compactified on a circle of radius R. It has the following two properties. (1) It reduces to the Yang-Mills theory…
$p$-form electrodynamics in $d\geq 2$ dimensions is shown to emerge as the edge modes of a topological field theory with a precise set of boundary conditions, through the Hamiltonian reduction of its action. Electric and magnetic charges…
In $d=4k+2$ dimensions, $p$-form gauge fields (with $p=2k$) with self-dual field strengths couple naturally to dyonic branes with equal electric and magnetic charges. Sen's action for a $p$-form gauge field with self-dual field strength…
Conformally compactified (3+1)-dimensional Minkowski spacetime may be identified with the projective light cone in (4+2)-dimensional spacetime. In the latter spacetime the special conformal group acts via rotations and boosts, and conformal…
We investigate duality properties of N-form fields, provide a symmetric way of coupling them to electric/magnetic sources, and check that these charges obey the appropriate quantization requirements. First, we contrast the D=4k case, in…
In this paper we initiate the study of six-dimensional non-linear chiral two-form gauge theories as deformations of free chiral two-form gauge theories driven by stress-tensor $T\overline T$-like flows. To lay the background for this study,…
Nonlinear covariant parity-violating deformations of free spin-two gauge theory are studied in n>2 spacetime dimensions, using a linearized frame and spin-connection formalism, for a set of massless spin-two fields. It is shown that the…
We identify new families of duality-invariant theories of electrodynamics. We achieve this in two different ways. On the one hand, we present an algorithm to construct a one-parameter family of exactly duality-invariant theories from a…
Self-dual 2-forms in D=2n dimensions are characterised by an eigenvalue criterion. The equivalence of various definitions of self-duality is proven. We show that the self-dual 2-forms determine a n^2-n+1 dimensional manifold S_{2n} and the…
It has been shown that, by adding an extra free field that decouples from the dynamics, one can construct actions for interacting 2n-form fields with self-dual field strengths in 4n+2 dimensions. In this paper we analyze canonical…
We consider a free (2 k)-form gauge-field on a Euclidean (4 k + 2)-manifold. The parameters needed to specify the action and the gauge-invariant observables take their values in spaces with natural complex structures. We show that the…
The role of the conformal group in electrodynamics in four space-time dimensions is re-examined. As a pedagogic example we use the application of conformal transformations to find the electromagnetic field for a charged particle moving with…
A strong coupling limit of theories whose low-energy effective field theory is 5-dimensional N=8 supergravity is proposed in which the gravitational coupling becomes large. It is argued that, if this limit exists, it should be a…