Published December 2008 | Version v1
Journal article

Electric/magnetic duality for chiral gauge theories with anomaly cancellation

  • 1. Instituut voor Theoretische Fysica, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven (Belgium)
  • 2. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik, Foehringer Ring 6, 80805 Muenchen (Germany)
  • 3. Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Sezione di Torino, Politecnico di Torino, C. so Duca degli Abruzzi 24, I-10129 Torino (Italy)

Description

We show that 4D gauge theories with Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation and possible generalized Chern-Simons terms admit a formulation that is manifestly covariant with respect to electric/magnetic duality transformations. This generalizes previous work on the symplectically covariant formulation of anomaly-free gauge theories as they typically occur in extended supergravity, and now also includes general theories with (pseudo-)anomalous gauge interactions as they may occur in global or local N = 1 supersymmetry. This generalization is achieved by relaxing the linear constraint on the embedding tensor so as to allow for a symmetric 3-tensor related to electric and/or magnetic quantum anomalies in these theories. Apart from electric and magnetic gauge fields, the resulting Lagrangians also feature two-form fields and can accommodate various unusual duality frames as they often appear, e.g., in string compactifications with background fluxes.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1126-6708/2008/12/105

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Journal of High Energy Physics
Journal Volume
12
Journal Issue
2008
Journal Page Range
p. 105
ISSN
1126-6708