- Letter
- Open Access
Novel duality-invariant theories of electrodynamics
Phys. Rev. D 112, L101902 – Published 7 November, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/8fyg-ljz4
Abstract
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 single seed duality-invariant theory. If the seed theory is causal, the theories constructed from this method will also be causal when the parameter is non-negative. On the other hand, we find two additional novel families of duality-invariant theories which include a nonzero term independent of the electromagnetic field. The first of them generalizes Bialynicki-Birula electrodynamics, while the second family of theories features a well-defined Maxwell limit as the term independent of the gauge field strength is sent to zero.
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Note that stands for terms that, under a rescaling , get an overall factor with .
Observe that the theory is not well defined for .
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