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RESEARCH PRODUCT
Electromagnetic Duality Anomaly in Curved Spacetimes
Iván AgullóJosé Navarro-salasAdrián Del RíoAdrian Del Riosubject
High Energy Physics - TheoryElectromagnetic fieldFOS: Physical sciencesGeneral Physics and AstronomyGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)01 natural sciencesGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmologysymbols.namesakeGravitational field0103 physical sciences010306 general physicsQuantumMathematical PhysicsMathematical physicsPhysicsChiral anomalyQuantum PhysicsConservation law010308 nuclear & particles physicsMathematical Physics (math-ph)Invariant (physics)Classical mechanicsHigh Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)Dirac fermionsymbolsNoether's theoremQuantum Physics (quant-ph)description
The source-free Maxwell action is invariant under electric-magnetic duality rotations in arbitrary spacetimes. This leads to a conserved classical Noether charge. We show that this conservation law is broken at the quantum level in presence of a background classical gravitational field with a non-trivial Chern-Pontryagin invariant, in a parallel way to the chiral anomaly for massless Dirac fermions. Among the physical consequences, the net polarization of the quantum electromagnetic field is not conserved.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-08-03 | Physical Review Letters |