English

Duality and helicity: a symplectic viewpoint

Mathematical Physics 2016-08-31 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory math.MP

Abstract

The theorem which says that helicity is the conserved quantity associated with the duality symmetry of the vacuum Maxwell equations is proved by viewing electromagnetism as an infinite dimensional symplectic system. In fact, it is shown that helicity is the moment map of duality acting as an SO(2)SO(2) group of canonical transformations on the symplectic space of all solutions of the vacuum Maxwell equations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.01131,
  title  = {Duality and helicity: a symplectic viewpoint},
  author = {M. Elbistan and C. Duval and P. A. Horvathy and P. -M. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.01131},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages, no figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T15:10:56.799Z