Generalised Symmetries and Manifest Duality I: Flat Spacetime

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chakrabarti, Subhroneel, Manna, Arkajyoti, Raman, Madhusudhan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917112313806848
author Chakrabarti, Subhroneel
Manna, Arkajyoti
Raman, Madhusudhan
author_facet Chakrabarti, Subhroneel
Manna, Arkajyoti
Raman, Madhusudhan
contents We present a novel, manifestly Lorentz-invariant, polynomial, and straightforwardly quantisable action for duality-symmetric gauge theories formulated using gauge potentials. Central to our construction is the identification of a harmonic higher-form symmetry which uniquely determines the field-strength and resolves the tension between Bianchi identities and dynamical equations of motion. Gauging this symmetry reproduces the flux-based description due to Sen and shows that the quantum consistency checks established for Sen's formalism are automatically subsumed by our action. Unlike Sen's flux-based formalism, our framework admits a simple minimal coupling to matter, the Witten effect, and extends readily to non-Abelian gauge fields. The new action admits remarkably simple supersymmetrisation. Using this action, we derive self-dual Yang-Mills equations from first principles and demonstrate the formalism explicitly for quantum electro-magnetodynamics in $D=4$. We also present a proof of charge quantisation that applies equally to ours and Sen's formulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_23350
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generalised Symmetries and Manifest Duality I: Flat Spacetime
Chakrabarti, Subhroneel
Manna, Arkajyoti
Raman, Madhusudhan
High Energy Physics - Theory
We present a novel, manifestly Lorentz-invariant, polynomial, and straightforwardly quantisable action for duality-symmetric gauge theories formulated using gauge potentials. Central to our construction is the identification of a harmonic higher-form symmetry which uniquely determines the field-strength and resolves the tension between Bianchi identities and dynamical equations of motion. Gauging this symmetry reproduces the flux-based description due to Sen and shows that the quantum consistency checks established for Sen's formalism are automatically subsumed by our action. Unlike Sen's flux-based formalism, our framework admits a simple minimal coupling to matter, the Witten effect, and extends readily to non-Abelian gauge fields. The new action admits remarkably simple supersymmetrisation. Using this action, we derive self-dual Yang-Mills equations from first principles and demonstrate the formalism explicitly for quantum electro-magnetodynamics in $D=4$. We also present a proof of charge quantisation that applies equally to ours and Sen's formulations.
title Generalised Symmetries and Manifest Duality I: Flat Spacetime
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.23350