The Beauty of Self-Duality

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteur principal: Ferreira, L. A.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Ferreira, L. A.
author_facet Ferreira, L. A.
contents Self-duality plays a very important role in many applications in field theories possessing topological solitons. In general, the self-duality equations are first order partial differential equations such that their solutions satisfy the second order Euler-Lagrange equations of the theory. The fact that one has to perform one integration less to construct self-dual solitons, as compared to the usual topological solitons, is not linked to the use of any dynamically conserved quantity. It is important that the topological charge admits an integral representation, and so there exists a density of topological charge. The homotopic invariance of it leads to local identities, in the form of second order differential equations. The magic is that such identities become the Euler-Lagrange equations of the theory when the self-duality equations are imposed. We review some important structures underlying the concept of self-duality, and show how it can be applied to kinks, lumps, monopoles, Skyrmions and instantons.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_10652
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Beauty of Self-Duality
Ferreira, L. A.
High Energy Physics - Theory
Mathematical Physics
Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems
Self-duality plays a very important role in many applications in field theories possessing topological solitons. In general, the self-duality equations are first order partial differential equations such that their solutions satisfy the second order Euler-Lagrange equations of the theory. The fact that one has to perform one integration less to construct self-dual solitons, as compared to the usual topological solitons, is not linked to the use of any dynamically conserved quantity. It is important that the topological charge admits an integral representation, and so there exists a density of topological charge. The homotopic invariance of it leads to local identities, in the form of second order differential equations. The magic is that such identities become the Euler-Lagrange equations of the theory when the self-duality equations are imposed. We review some important structures underlying the concept of self-duality, and show how it can be applied to kinks, lumps, monopoles, Skyrmions and instantons.
title The Beauty of Self-Duality
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
Mathematical Physics
Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10652