Electric-magnetic duality and renormalization in curved spacetimes

We point out that the duality symmetry of free electromagnetism does not hold in the quantum theory if an arbitrary classical gravitational background is present. The symmetry breaks in the process of renormalization, as also happens with conformal invariance. We show that a similar duality anomaly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. D, Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology, 2014-12, Vol.90 (12), Article 124067
Main Authors: Agullo, Ivan, Landete, Aitor, Navarro-Salas, Jose
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Break in
Cosmology
Curved
Gravitation
Gravitation theory
Quantum theory
Scalars
Symmetry
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Summary:We point out that the duality symmetry of free electromagnetism does not hold in the quantum theory if an arbitrary classical gravitational background is present. The symmetry breaks in the process of renormalization, as also happens with conformal invariance. We show that a similar duality anomaly appears for a massless scalar field in 1 + 1 dimensions.
ISSN:1550-7998
1550-2368
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.90.124067